FT 

MEADE 


4BV 

£v. ;entennial celebration 

OF 

MODERN MISSIONS, 

HELD WITH 

WALNUT ST, BAPTIST CHURCH 

LOUISVILLE, KY. 

OCTOBER 2-4, 1802. 


LOUISVILLE, KY. : 
BAPTIST BOOK CONCERN, 
1892. 



! 















CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF MODERN 
MISSIONS. 


FIRST DAY—Sunday, October 2. 

The Centennial Committee of the Southern Baptist Con¬ 
vention consists of the following brethren: 

T. T. Eaton, D.D.,LL.D., Chairman. 

H. H. Harris, LL.D. 

F. M. Ellis, D.D. 

I. T. Tichenor, D.D. 

T. H. Pritchard, D.D. 

The Committee, with many brethren from all parts of the 
country, were present. 

The venerable Robert Ryland, D.D., was called to the 
chair. 

Dr. W. H. Williams, of St. Louis, invoked the divine bene¬ 
diction. 

After singing, prayer was offered by Rev. B. D. Gray, D.D., 
of Mississippi. 

Pastor T. T. Eaton made the following address of welcome: 

Brethren and Fathers: —To me has been assigned the pleasant 
duty of bidding you welcome. We are gathered to celebrate the centen¬ 
nial anniversary of the beginning of modern missions. Just one hun¬ 
dred years ago to-day was organized in Kettering, England, the first 
society of modern times for giving the gospel to the heathen. Presently 
the people from all the world will be assembling in Chicago for the pur¬ 
pose of commemorating the adding of a new continent to the map of the 
world, and that is well. But what is the discovery of a continent com¬ 
pared to the beginning of modern missions? Columbus discovered 
America, but Carey discovered the world. In behalf of the Baptists of 
Kentucky, in behalf of the denomination and the community in Louis¬ 
ville, and in behalf of this grand old church with whom you meet, I bid 
you welcome. It is well that you have come; well for you in the blessing 
you will receive in your labors of love among us; well for us in the in. 
struction and inspiration we will derive from your coming and from the 
glad messages you bring, and well for the cause of Him who loved us and 
gave himself for us, and whose right it is to reign. 



4 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


Prof. H. Harris, LL.D., spoke on 

Results of a Century of Missions. 

The last hundred years have seen greater and more varied progress 
than any other like period in the history of mankind. A map of the 
world as now printed on great power presses is not only immensely 
superior in finish and accuracy, but it also presents a different world 
from that of its prototype, laboriously drawn with goose-quill pen on 
pieces of paper pasted together, and hung upon the walls of the cobbler’s 
shop at Moulton in 1792. Since that time our own country has more 
than doubled its domain and increased its population about fifteen fold. 
England has vastly extended her sway and changed her home govern¬ 
ment from a personal to a constitutional sovereignty. Germany and 
Italy have effected unification with great advances in individual free¬ 
dom. France, Mexico, Central and South America have turned from 
monarchial to democratic forms of government. Insurrections, rebel¬ 
lions, and revolutions—called one or other according to the number 
and success of parties engaged—have torn down the Bastiles of ancient 
custom and used their stones to pave the pathway of popular progress. 
Great wars have introduced such improvements in the art of wholesale 
destruction as to make personal bravery of no avail and armed conflict a 
terror. 

More notable still has been the advance in the arts of peace. New 
processes of mining and of metalurgy have unlocked rich stores laid up 
in the heart of the earth. Machines without number have been devised 
for cultivating the soil, for manufacturing and transporting its products, 
and for utilizing in man’s service the strength of inferior animals and 
the forces that lurk in coal, in water, even in the lightings. The whole 
system of steamboats, railways and electrical appliances belong to the 
nineteenth century. Carey had a prosperous voyage from London to 
Calcutta. It occupied five months lacking one day. News of his arrival 
did not reach home for about a year. To-day one can make the trip in 
two weeks and cable the news instantly. 

Greatest of all has been the progress in commercial and social life. 
A hundred years ago more than half the human family were entirely 
•cut off from the more enlightened parts of earth, or connected only 
through a few trading posts controlled by avaricious corporations. The 
opium wars with China, the Sepoy troubles in India, like conflicts else¬ 
where, explorations in Central Africa, and commercial treaties more or 
less extorted, have now united the whole world into one body politic, 
with overland wires and submarine cables for its nerves, and a system 
of banks and post offices for the arteries and veins of its vital circulation. 
The few books and fewer periodicals of 1792 has developed into the 
mighty flood of literature that has fertilized, sometimes disastrously 
•overflowed, the richest of our intellectual lands. All the arts and 
sciences have moved with rapid stride. 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


5 


We do not forget that change is not always improvement, that move¬ 
ment may be backward, and yet it remains indisputably true that the 
closing century, far beyond any of its predecessors, has been progressive. 
Has Christian activity kept pace with the march of humanity? Has the 
faith delivered once for all more than eighteen hundred years ago, 
proved suitable to its new environment? Amid the triumphs of science, 
has grace also reigned? In the general growth of knowledge, has 
the knowledge of Jesus increased? In an intensely practical age, has the 
law of love been more clearly exemplified? Have Christian people dur¬ 
ing the century been merely borne along on a tidal wave of natural 
evolution, or have their faith and their zeal been potent agencies in 
starting and swelling the tide of progress? These questions will find 
answer in considering the results of the modern missionary movement. 

In the complex organization of human society, results are either direct 
or indirect—the former, such as flow primarily and chiefly from the 
assigned cause, being only modified and helped by co-operating influ¬ 
ences: the latter, such as flow mainly from other forces, but these evoked, 
stimulated or materially assisted by the given cause. The indirect 
results of a great moral influence are naturally more in number than the 
direct, but hard to trace out and establish clearly. They must in the 
present discussion be passed over with very brief notice. 

One other prefatory remark. The term missions suggests a very wide 
theme, which for convenience has been divided into City, State, Home 
and Foreign Missions, with diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit, 
diversities of ministrations, but the same Lord, diversities of workings, 
hut the same God. Time would fail to discuss them all. I have chosen 
that one with which I am more particularly connected and which in 
some sort embraces the rest. The world is more than our country, our 
State, our community. A wave started in some deep bay moves out to 
the ocean, and its height is less and less as the shores recede. But a 
tidal wave raised by sun and moon on the broad bosom of the world- 
embracing sea runs up into the bay and rises higher and higher to its 
head. If the constraining love of Christ shall raise within us an interest 
in the salvation of mankind in general, we cannot fail to be more and 
more interested in those people who are nearer to us. 

INDIRECT RESULTS. 

1. Among the indirect results of modern missions one of the earliest 
and most obvious is the science of Comparative Philology. Dr. Carey 
was pre-eminent as a linguist and for thirty years was Professor of Sans¬ 
crit and Bengali. Ability to master foreign tongues has always been 
counted one of the qualifications for mission work. It is not too much 
to assert that the influence thus set in motion has completely revolution¬ 
ized all philological study and extended to all other lines of investiga¬ 
tion the benefits of the Comparative method. It has given a stimulus to 
all forms of intellectual activity, and is felt in every school from the 


/ 


6 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


primary grades to the great universities. The literary world would be 
poor indeed if stripped of all it owes indirectly to missionaries. 

2. Along with this has gone the contribution to our stores of knowl¬ 
edge in geography and natural history, for missionaries have necessarily 
been explorers, botanists, naturalists, anthropologists. To take one in¬ 
stance out of many not a few of us can remember when maps of equatorial 
Africa were a blank, and the ancient question about the sources of the 
Nile was still a mystery. Livingstone changed all that. 

3. A third result of missions, indirect and incidental, may be seen in 
the extension of arts and habits of civilized society. Traders seek 
money, missionaries are fishers of men. Eighty years ago the Fiji 
Islanders were naked cannibals, they are now clothed and in their right 
mind, a Christian community. The progress of Japan, one of the mar¬ 
vels of the century, is unquestionably due more to the Christian religion 
than to any other one cause. These are but samples of a work silently 
and surely going on in every mission-field. 

4. A fourth result to which missionaries have largely contributed, is 
seen in the gradual abatement of mutual jealousy and the steady growth 
of more kindly feeling between men of different races and nations, which 
has made it possible for diplomacy to negotiate mutually advantageous 
treaties instead of cruel conquest and fierce oppression of the weaker by 
the stronger. A notable -illustration may be seen in our own western 
country in comparing those Indians who have been held in check only 
by rifles, with those others who have been sought out by faithful preach¬ 
ers of the gospel. 

Much more might be said of the indirect results of modern missions, 
but we must hasten to consider some of the 

DIRECT RESULTS. 

These may be grouped under four leading statements. 

1. The reflex influence of Missions. 

This is seen in the enlargement of heart and mind among Christians 
at home. Our fathers of a hundred years ago had to meet not only the 
sneering ridicule of unbelievers, and violent opposition from the worldly- 
wise, but, far harder to bear, indifference on the part of really pious 
people and outspoken skepticism about the possibility of barbarians ac¬ 
cepting Christ. So it was also in apostolic days. The church at Jeru¬ 
salem, though baptized in the Holy Spirit, verily thought the new faith 
must be kept within the old bounds of national seclusion, and actually 
contended with Peter because he had gone with the Word of Life to men 
uncircumcised. They had heard the phrases “all the world,” and “all 
nations,” and “unto the uttermost parts of the earth,” but they had not 
reached the idea of a universal religion suited to the real wants of all 
men everywhere. 

The “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,” 
formed in 1701 was designed in the words of its charter “for the relig- 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


7 


ious instruction of the queen’s subjects beyond the seas; for the mainten¬ 
ance of clergymen in the plantations, colonies and factories of Great 
Britain; and for the propagation of the gospel in those parts.” Similarly 
limited in scope were the Danish missions of the 18th century, and in 
fact all others of that time. How else could it be with men who believed 
in a Union of church and State? 

We are at length beginning to grasp a higher and truer conception of 
the Christ, and to realize somewhat thaj; the gospel is for man, not as an 
Israelite, not as an Anglo-Saxon, not as a civilized and enlightened 
being, but simply and solely as a sinner; that in this there is no differ¬ 
ence, the same Lord of all being rich unto all that call upon him; and 
so we can in some sort appreciate that the field is the world, and the 
whole world, and can sing with the understanding the Coronation hymn. 
This great idea expands the mind, thrills the heart into sympathy with 
the mind that was in Christ Jesus. A growing tree sends out its rdbts 
and gathers material from the soil, but before this can become a part of 
the organism, it must be drawn up through trunk and branch and twig, 
and in the laboratory of the waving leaf be fitted by air and sunlight to 
descend again by the inner bark and add every year another ring of woody 
fibre. So churches planted in Christian lands are constantly gathering 
in material through many feeders, but before it is fit to be incorporated 
into the body, it needs to be drawn up into an atmosphere of world em¬ 
bracing love and wrought upon by the beams of the Sun of righteousness. 
Mission work is to the churches at home what leaves are to the trees. 
In France and Italy the mulberries are often stripped of their foliage to 1 
feed silk-worms—as a result the trees are dwarfed and gnarled and short 
lived. So will it be with a church that does not develop and cultivate a 
missionary spirit. The maples and hickories of our forests are now put¬ 
ting on their autumn colors, for their life is waning into the sleep of 
winter, but the church is more fitly represented by an olive tree, ever¬ 
green. 

2. Converts from Heathenism. 

Another obvious result of missions is seen in the conversion of at least 
a million souls out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. The 
latest tabulated reports put the communicants of evangelical churches 
in heathen lands at about 800,000. Nearly if not quite 200,000 more have 
either paid the debt of nature or yielded up their lives in martyrdom for 
the truth. Add the uncounted thousands who, like Joseph of Arimathea, 
are secret disciples. A friend who spent some weeks this summer with 
the Baptist pastor in Dresden, tells me that in that one city are scores 
of young people dependent upon their daily labor, who wish to be bap¬ 
tized but are hindered because it would mean immediate discharge by 
their Catholic employers and being cast out by even their parents. How 
much more does this fear operate in ancestral-worshipping China or 
.caste-bound India! The number of adherents, counting young children 


8 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


of church members and others who have renounced idolatry and are 
seeking the true light, is put at three millions—a very low estimate. 
Five millions, in my judgment, would be more nearly correct. These 
figures, though large when compared with the fewness of laborers, sink 
into insignificance in contrast with the mass yet remaining without God 
and without hope in the world, the 850 millions of absolute pagans, who 
have not so much as heard of a Savior, and the 500 millions of semi¬ 
pagans, Roman and Greek Catholics and Mohammedans who ‘'teach as 
their doctrines the precepts of men,” “hold down the truth in unright¬ 
eousness” and veil the doctrines of grace under a thick cloud of soul- 
destroying superstitions. How little comparatively has been done. 
Years ago the entrance to New York harbor from the Sound was ob¬ 
structed by a great mass of rock around which the tides swirled in 
treacherous currents and dashed many a bark to destruction. The Fed¬ 
eral Government undertook to remove it. For months and years the 
work went on, thousands, millions of money were expended. The rock 
remained substantially unchanged, the currents ran on treacherous as 
ever, all the apparent result was a few car-loads of pulverized granite, 
hoisted little by little from a shaft. But tunnels had been driven hither 
and yon, chambers hewn out, packed with dynamite and giant powder 
and connected by wires with an office on shore, and when at length the 
set time arrived a child’s finger touching a button sent an electric spark, 
and hell-gate rock burst into a thousand fragments. Missionaries in 
India, in China, in Africa, in Persia, in Italy, have been pushing along 
• the narrow lines of personal influence, gathering a few converts, but 
planting seeds which have in them a possibility of infinite expansion, 
and so preparing for God’s set time when the spark of his quickening 
Spirit shall “cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all 
nations.” The greatest of all moral forces works in and through the 
Word of the Lord. This leads us to consider 

3. The Increased Circulation of the Scriptures. 

Dr. Carey made Bible translation his chief business. Before sailing 
for India he met a young printer and said to him: “We shall want you in 
a few years to print the Bible; you must come after us.” Thus Wm. 
Ward was called to found the great Printing House at Serampore which 
even in Cdrey’s lifetime had issued over 200,000 copies of Scripture in 
forty different dialects. In like manner all other evangelical mission¬ 
aries have labored to give the people the Word of God in their own ver¬ 
nacular. In not a few instances they have been obliged first to reduce 
the spoken tongues to a written form and introduce the art of reading. 

The British and Foreign Bible Society, organized in 1804, was one of 
the first fruits of missions. A call had come from Wales for a supply of 
Bibles. At a meeting held to see what could be done our brother, the 
Rev. Joseph Hughes, urged a plan comprehensive enough to embrace 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


9- 


within its scope the entire world. This one Society has printed of 
Bibles, Testaments, and separate portions of Scripture, 130 million copies 
in nearly 200 different lauguages and dialects, and has its agents to pro¬ 
mote their circulation all over the world. In the train of this great 
Society have followed about seventy others, large and small, whose 
aggregate output has been over 100 million copies. Of the work of pri¬ 
vate publishers we have no statistics. 

Dr. Oust of the B. and F. Society has given years to the preparation of 
a list of versions up to 1890, with much information linguistic, geograph¬ 
ical and bibliographical, (see Encyclopedia of Missions, pp. 547-77). It 
is dangerous I know for one man to manipulate facts and figures com¬ 
piled by another, but an examination of his results, with much care, 
seems to show that there were a hundred years ago including the orig¬ 
inal tongues thirty-three versions of the Bible. But half a dozen of 
these, Arminian, Syriac, Slavonic, Gothic, Latin and Greek, were read 
only by a few scholars, or intoned in liturgies by priests who rarely 
comprehended what they repeated. As many more were carefully kept 
out of reach of the common people. There were really less than twenty 
versions of the Bible in actual use. Up to 1890, besides numerous revis¬ 
ions, there had been added in a hundred years 59 distinct translations of 
the whole Bible into as many different tongues. Of the New Testament 
alone or conjoined with parts of the Old, e.g., the Pentateuch or the 
Psalms, there were in 1792 a few versions made by Ziegenbalg, Elliott 
and other eighteenth century missionaries, at present more than eighty 
versions are printed and circulated. Of additional translations, yet 
incomplete, there had been printed in 1890 portions ranging from a sin¬ 
gle gospel up to three-fourths of the New Testament with half the Old, 
no less than 157. The aggregate of all these, Bibles, Testaments and 
Portions, is 330 as against less than 50 a hundred years ago. And what 
is more to the purpose over 300 of them are in actual circulation, being, 
like the decree of Ahasuerus, sent to every province and “to every peo¬ 
ple after their language.” Thibet, the high table land of Central Asia, 
is one of the few countries that still closes its gates against all foreigners 
and is specially jealous of religious innovation. But a company of 
Moravians have been sitting for years at the barred gates, have learned 
the language and translated into it the New Testament, the Pentateuch, 
the Psalms and Isaiah. When the army of Victor Emmanuel entered 
Rome, September 20, 1870, close upon the heels of the marching soldiers 
came a colporter with his pushcart laden with Italian Bibles. A treaty 
made this year with England opens Thibet to commerce. It will not be 
long before the United Brethren can follow the tramp of an army carry¬ 
ing a Thibetan Bible issued from the presses of the B. and F. B. Society. 

4. Preparatory Work. 

A fourth result of this century of missions, and the last to be consid¬ 
ered, is the preparation for future work in the organization of Christen- 


10 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


dom, the accumulation of experience, and the establishment of good-will 
everywhere. 

According to the best available statistics there are now at work of 
general organization for Foreign Missions 31 in the United States, 4 in 
Canada, 29 in Great Britain, 28 in Continental Europe and 2 in the 
Pacific Isles—total 94. Of Woman’s Societies, acting independently, 
there are 2 in the United States (the Woman’s Union Interdenomina¬ 
tional, with rooms in New York, and that of the Friends, in Center Val¬ 
ley, Ill.), 1 in Canada, 5 in England, 1 in Scotland—total 9. Of Woman’s 
Societies co-operating with other organizations, there are 30 in the 
United States, 9 in Canada, and 13 in Great Britain. Aggregate of sep¬ 
arate organizations 103, auxiliary 52. Add about a hundred smaller 
Societies, organized for a narrow area or for special work, as e.g., in the 
older missionary fields to evangelize what is to them the home land. 
The seventy-odd Bible Societies have been already mentioned. The 
Home Mission, Sunday-school and Tract Societies, the Y. M. C. Associ¬ 
ations, and in fact all organizations for Christian work, do something, 
directly or indirectly, to illumine the nations that “sit in darkness and 
in the shadow of death.” The regular foreign mission Societies raise 
and expend every year increasing amounts. The latest figures foot up 
about eleven million dollars, used to support, in round numbers, 8,000 
missionaries and 35,000 native helpers. 

Different plans of work have been tried. The ardent love and buoy¬ 
ant zeal of enthusiastic young workers impels them to strike out, time 
and again, new methods, new lines of policy, or more frequently to try 
over again what in other hands have failed. Questions about methods 
have to be discussed again and again. Experience gradually proves all 
things and holds fast to that which is good. The Holy Spirit sent forth 
Barnabas and Saul, but seems to have left them in many matters to the 
guidance of sanctified common sense and accumulated experience. It 
would be folly to imagine that we have yet reached or indeed ever shall 
reach, perfection in our theories, much less in our practice, but it is a 
compliment to the Careys and Judsons to say that by the help of their 
experience and all that has been since added, we are to-day in better 
position than ever before to solve the problems of missionary life. 

The labors of a hundred years have wrought almost as great a change 
in public sentiment abroad as at home. It was perfectly natural for 
people ignorant of Christianity and of the unselfish love which it in¬ 
spires, to regard the early missionaries as either political spies or mer¬ 
cenary prospectors. What else that heathenism knew, could induce 
them to endure such hardships? But long years of unswerving truth 
and kindliness, and particularly in times of pestilence, or floods, or 
famine, have slowly established their real character and instead of being 
hated or feared, they are beginning to be respected, and loved, even by 
those who will not heed their message. Heathen governments with few 
exceptions are friendly to real Christian work and will more and more 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


11 


find out that it makes better citizens. The past century has been largely 
a time of planting and watering and tilling in preparation for future 
harvests. Some foretastes have been given of what we may expect in 
fuller measure. The first Karen convert was won in 1828, the baptized 
believers among that people now number 27,000. The Telugu mission 
^yielded little visible fruit for more than thirty years, but then came the 
Pentecostal season. 

This preparatory work in several of the phases mentioned, is strikingly 
illustrated by the crowning glory of this century of missions, Woman’s 
Work for Woman, begun in England about sixty, in this country about 
thirty years ago. In a most important sense there is no distinction of 
sex in religion, “there can be neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor 
free, no male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus.” But in the 
church as established on earth there is a difference, for it still remains 
true as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, that “it is shameful for a woman 
to speak in church.” Still more difference is there in the society, the 
manners and customs of the world. In heathen and Mohammedan coun¬ 
tries a daughter, instead of bring the light and joy of the house, is valued 
solely for what she will fetch in the market, and a wife, instead of being 
the trusted counsellor at her husband’s side, is a slave to be trampled 
beneath his feet. In Catholic lands, both Greek and Roman, the condi¬ 
tion of the weaker vessel is better, yet still far below her proper station 
as prescribed in the Word of God and practiced among evangelical 
Christians. Woman therefore owes for this life far more than man to 
the gospel, and being more benefitted she naturally loves more. Then 
again she only can enter the zenana, the harem, the heathen home, and 
carry there the word of life and liberty the sweet story of the Man of 
Sorrows. So it is that as missionaries who have access to the women 
and children, our devoted sisters are doing the best and truest founda¬ 
tion work, while the circles and bands at home are stirring up the slug- 
ish churches, and by their constant gathering of many little rills of 
prayer and praise and liberality are pouring a perennial stream into the 
Lord’s treasury. Unfortunately there have sometimes been misconcep¬ 
tions and misstatements of their plans and purposes, leading to jars and 
friction and separate work. It is matter of hearty congratulation that 
the Woman’s Missionary Union, with headquarters in Baltimore, pro¬ 
claims itself “auxiliary to the S. B. C.” and very carefully heeds the 
apostolic injunction against usurping authority. God speed their labors! 

To sum up in conclusion, the century of mission work has brought 
near the ends of the earth, has roused many Christians to some little 
appreciation of their responsibilty, has gained converts enough to prove 
the universal adaptation of the gospel, has widely disseminated tl^3 
Word of God, has laid foundations, gained experience and effected 
organization for better work hereafter. From the mountain of Galilee 
still rings out in louder tones the great command “Make disciples of all 
.the nations,” and from the bright cloud of Jehovah’s manifest presence 


12 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


comes as of old the trumpet call “Go forward.” If we and our children 
shall prove at all worthy of the trust committed to us, watchful of our 
opportunities, obedient to our Lord, the next century, nay, rather the 
next generation, will witness results an hundred fold greater and more 
glorious. “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead 
of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord 
for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.” 

The Rev. F. M. Ellis, D.D., then delivered a sermon, of 
which the following is a synopsis he kindly prepared for 
publication: 

THE MORAL BASIS OF MISSIONS. 

I. Jno. iii:14-17. 

When the foundations of the Strasburg Cathedral were rising the 
architect was suddenly cut off. It was a sore calamity. Who could 
translate into that proposed structure the conception of the master 
builder? 

It was suggested that this responsibility might be referred to his 
daughter who had been associated with her father from the first, and 
that was done. 

As one stands before that venerable pile to-day he is impressed with 
architectural misconceptions that doubtless mar the completeness of the 
original designs of that Cathedral. 

Jesus had scarcely finished the foundations of His Kingdom when he 
was put to death on the cross. The completion of his work was referred 
to the Holy Spirit as the interpreter of his plans and purposes to His 
church. As we look at the churches to-day, as in sects and sections they 
are toiling upon His Kingdom, we must account for the defective work 
done, by concluding that the designs of the divine architect are but im¬ 
perfectly understood by these builders. 

THE MISSIONARY IDEA. 

Which is our Lord’s conception is not only not understood but often 
misunderstood. Is it Christ’s plan to convert the world, by means of the 
church, or has he sent forth His church to gather out from among the 
nations a people for himself ? Whichever of these views we take will 
largely determine, for us, our methods and aims in our work for and in 
missions. 

Our methods, if approved of God, must be adjusted to the divine pur¬ 
pose in missions. 

The impulse to missionary endeavor must be begotten in us by the 
love of God, not our love for Him, but His love in us. This love which 
John makes the assurance of eternal life, and is as Paul tells us the con¬ 
straining power of the new life. It is the love of God, that sent forth 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


13 


Ms son to die for sinners—in us that sends us forth to serve, and if need 
be to lay down our lives for the brethren. In this love is to be found 
the evidence of our fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus 
Christ. 

To refuse to serve men in a ministry of such self-denial is to repudiate 
the love of God. This love that impels us to such self-denial for others 
moreover distinguishes us as children of God from the children of the 
devil. Hence in this love, awakened and impelled by the love of God in 
us, is to be found the mainspring of missions. 

The witness of a redeemed church to this redeeming love of Christ for 
man, approved by the Holy Spirit is the work of the New Testament 
church. 

If this be true then in such a work there can be no proxies, because a 
personal conviction of duty and an individual sense of responsibility are 
inseparable in such a service. 

It makes each individual believer in Christ a witness to this love and 
also a herald of it to others, as it did Andrew to Peter, Philip to Na¬ 
thaniel and the woman sf Samaria to her neighbors. 

The fact is this sense of our love of God, and our love to God makes 
priesthood as universal as experimental salvation is personal. A regen¬ 
erated church is therefore, through this elective love of God, a “spiritual 
house,” a “holy priesthood; to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to 
God through Christ.” Aye, a royal priesthood * * * that ye may 

show forth the excellencies of Him who hath called you out of darkness 
into his marvelous light,” and, hence, the duty of witnessing to the gos¬ 
pel of this grace of God is not only the right but the personal duty and 
privilege of Christian discipleship. 

Again, the work to which the divine love sends us forth, is not so 
much a work for God as it is a work with God. We are not servants , but 
children who serve in love. Under this divine impulse we become co¬ 
workers with God, co-partakers with Christ, and co-witnesses with the 
Holy Spirit, i.e., we are co-laborers with the triune God. It is this 
which dignifies our service as witnesses and missionaries, and secures 
for our efforts the divine approval and blessing. 

In the nature of the case, therefore, the work of missions, which is the 
witnessing of a saved church—of saved members—must rest upon a 
moral basis. 

. Where shall we look for this moral basis, and what is to especially 
distinguish it? To this question I reply— 

I. We are to seek for the moral basis of missions in the benevolent 
nature of God. 

John defines God as love —“God is love.” Hence “God so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on 
him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 

In this limitless love yearning over a perishing race, manifesting its 
inexpressible tenderness by the gift of the only begotten Son, as the open 


14 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


door to everlasting life to all who would enter in by Him. God laid the 
basis for all work with Him—or for Him. Without such a basic motive 
and divine impulse, which transforms duty into an exalted privilege, our 
work, if not impossible, would be the veriest slavery. 

The work of missions therefore rests upon a moral basis broad as the 
incarnation. 

II. The moral basis of missions is to be sought for in the active minis¬ 
try of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

His work and his Father’s were one and the same work. He came “to 
seek and to save that which was lost,” and in doing this to “glorify His 
Father.” The church of Christ must never lose sight in her missionary 
work that out of Christ, men are lost. She must fully recognize, as did 
Christ, that men are lost. As we lose sight of this, as we substitute 
other means, or other names, than that of Christ, as satisfactory condi¬ 
tions and terms of salvation, we depart from the line marked out for us 
by him who hath brought life and immortality to light through the 
gospel. 

Because man is lost —hopelessly lost—unless God interferes on his be¬ 
half, the incarnation was a necessity. This plain fact of the gospel—the 
peril of man out of Christ must not be lessened, awful as it is—for the 
incarnation and death of Jesus Christ give to this dreadful truth an 
emphasis that must not be trifled with. 

While Christ is the only name under heaven, given among men 
whereby we must be saved, the hope of salvation in any other name or 
by any other means is a delusion. “He came that we might have life.” 

Love descends and seeks to lift up. Jesus was in heaven before he 
came to earth. He came down to us that he might bring us—lift us up 
to God. Jesus the message of the infinite love of God to the world, com¬ 
ing down to us, and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the 
cross. What an appeal to a church possessed with this same love! to a 
church that loves men, because God loves men and because she loves 
God. 

What a basis we have in all this for Christian service, and for the joy 
that glorifies that service that seeks the lost that they may be brought 
back to their home and to their Father! It was this awful thought that 
men, out of Christ, are lost, and hence must be brought to Christ, if 
saved, that roused the great Judson from his skepticism—when a youth— 
and no doubt gave its force to the reasons that made him the missionary 
he became. It was this peril of the lost, for whose rescue the only be¬ 
gotten Son of God came to earth, that roused Carey and led Paul to con¬ 
secrate themselves to the missionary work of the church. God’s love for 
a lost world, illustrated and enforced as it is in the earthly ministry of 
our Lord, is the Christian motive for missions! How much we need a 
revival, to-day, of this divine passion for the perishing, deepened by the 
ministry of the Holy Spirit! 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 




How much the churches of this age need to study Jesus’ methods of 
dealing with the lost. Compare his methods with ours; His spirit with 
ours. The love in which He sought the lost was a magnet that drew the 
people to Him—is ours? Alas! Let us not be deceived. The way in 
which we seek men has a most important effect upon our success in sav¬ 
ing them. 

But, great as this motive for seeking to save the lost, furnished in the 
peril to which they are exposed, may be, and it must not be lightly con¬ 
sidered. Still it is not the Supreme Motive for missionary endeavor. 
Our sympathy for a perishing race is but a feeble, flickering sentiment 
compared to the glory of God, in the redemption of the lost. In all 
Jesus’ active ministry the end sought by him was the glory of God. 
“Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify Thee.” ’Thus Christ 
prayed for; for this he lived and toiled, died and rose again. 

Christ, who is the life of his church, is also the motive of his church. 
Nothing must supplant him. Love for him, faith in him, energized by 
the Holy Spirit, are the forces of all success in the endeavors of his fol¬ 
lowers. The Spirit of Christ is therefore 

THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 

To our Lord’s ministry on earth we must look for the illustration of 
that passion for souls that should characterize the lives of those who 
would imitate Him. This passion for souls for the glory of God, is what 
the church needs most of all to-day. This passion will deepen and 
intensify our consecration and possess us with the proper realization of 
our personal stewardship as nothing else can. This passion must have 
its roots in spiritual life, and our spiritual life must measure our spirit¬ 
ual power. If after all the disciples had heard and seen of Jesus in their 
three years of daily, intimate intercourse, it was necessary that they 
should wait for a spiritual equipment to fit them for missionary work, 
how much more do we need such a preparation for this work! 

Christ’s words are surely appropriate to us—“Tarry until ye be 
endowed with power.” Do we tarry thus? On such waiting depends the 
tongue of fire, and the heart of flame. Enthusiasm is no substitute for 
the divine endowment. We must advance on our knees, if our going is 
clothed in the power of the Holy Spirit. It was this passion for souls 
kindled by the Holy Spirit that dictated the epitaph of Cox, in Africa, 
“Let a hundred missionaries die before Africa is given up.” It was this 
passion for God’s glory in the salvation of souls that laid Carey’s life as 
a living sacrifice upon the altar of Foreign Missions. 

This passion for God’s glory in the salvation of the lost, will find ex¬ 
pression in a personal effort to seek and save souls in proportion to the 
intensity of this desire. 

This work of Christ’s—“to seek and to save the lost,”—is your work 
and mine. “For his sake,” this spheres all motives of Christian effort^ 
after all. 


16 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


On one occasion, when Andrew Fuller was seeking 1 the means to aid 
•Carey and his companions in the foreign field, his solicitation was an¬ 
swered by an acquaintance: “Well, Andrew, seeing it is you I will give 
j-ou five pounds.” Fuller replied, “If it is for my sake that you give I will 
not accept your gift.” His friend saw his mistake, and quickly replied, 
“Well, seeing it is for Christ's sake I will give you twenty-five pounds.” 

Christ must be our motive and pattern in missions as in all our service 
for him. 

III. The moral basis for missions is to be sought for in our Lord’s 
commission to his disciples. 

“All power (authority) is given unto me in heaven and in earth, go ye 
■therefore , and teach all nations, * * * lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world.” 

These were the words of him who had only forty days before come 
forth from the grave, whence he had been borne from a cross of suffer¬ 
ing and shame. His death and resurrection had given him them astery 
of heaven and of earth, and upon this supreme authority he rested his 
commission to his redeemed church. 

And who were this church? Unknown men, called from the fishing 
boats of Galilee, and the custom house of Capernaum. Some of whom 
had denied him. All of whom had forsaken him at his death, and 
doubted the truth of his resurrection. To men such as these he commit¬ 
ted the work of a world’s evangelization! To them he embodied his 
marching orders in his last commission. In that commission the revel¬ 
ation and person of himself was made the foundation and center of Chris¬ 
tian teaching—the spirit of obedience is made the spirit of his disciples. 
Christ’s church is made the witness and minister of his gospel; that com¬ 
mission recognizes the omnipotence of Christ as the reason why his fol¬ 
lowers should evangelize and baptize, and it also makes Christ's omni¬ 
presence (Lo, I am with you, etc.) the hope of his people in the work to 
which He sends them. So that Christ’s commission spheres not only 
the logic but also the motive of missions. If, therefore, the divine pur¬ 
pose of the church be missionary, then the church must be such in fact 
or it must be out of harmony with the divine purpose. Every word of 
the commission, as we have seen, pulsates with the energy of a divine 
sovereignty; in it he opened up the divine purpose and issues of our 
Lord’s death. Upon the omnipotence of Christ (“All authority is given 
unto me,”) he places the “ therefore ” of his commission, and the duty of 
his church (“go ye therefore and make disciples”). 

Hence, because missions are the purpose of Christ, missions are the 
business of the church. Shall we set over against this magnificent aim 
of the Christ, the inadequacy of the church’s means, which after all is 
the confessed exponent of the incompleteness of her consecration? Do 
we not know that what the church gives of her means and of her mem¬ 
bers for missions is no measure of her ability to give, but rather the 
confession of her unwillingness to give? He who could out of a lad’s 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


17 


lunch, of five biscuits and two herring’, spread a banquet for more than 
five thousand in the wilderness, can and does multiply our offerings, but 
not because our offering is “five loaves and two little fishes,” but because 
it is our all. 

People speak glibly and smilingly of “giving the widow’s mite” (it was 
“two mites”). They should remember, however, that Jesus honored the 
widow’s gift not because it was a “farthing,” but because it was “all the 
living she had.” She gave as our Lord himself gave. So that few peo¬ 
ple who so promptly quote the widow’s example ever complied with it. 
When they give “all their living,” then they will have as little to say 
about it as’ did that widow. Until then they should be ashamed to shield 
their covetousness behind so glaring a misrepresentation, as that which 
they made of the act so warmly approved by the Master. 

Our reason for going forth is Jesus’ omnipotence, or hope in thus 
going is his omnipresence. Could we ask for more? Here then, in the 
Commission’s mighty motives for missions may be found the moral basis 
of missions. 

Remember, the secret of the church’s power, in missions, is not of men 
or of money, but it is the enthroned Christ! The living, waiting, ex¬ 
pecting Christ is his church’s inspiration and power. Christ in his me¬ 
diatorial throne is the power behind the church and hence behind the 
missionary, and His presence with us now, as co-worker with us, guar¬ 
antees to us his coming as the King with whom we shall also reign. 
For “if we endure we shall also reign with Him.” 

Not one provision of that divine commission has ever been repealed, 
and it will not be until Christ comes in his glory. 

In that marching order of an aggressive, missionary church, lie, en¬ 
folded, revivals, reformations, and revolutions, as do the miracles of life 
in the laws of nature and of God. That commission of Christ makes the 
life of each disciple an interpreter to the world of the meaning and pur¬ 
pose of the cross. Hence, in the meaning of the cross, and of the com¬ 
mission, only a converted church can be a missionary church. Propaga¬ 
ting a dead orthodoxy, a lifeless creed, or ecclesiastical forms, is not the 
evangelization enforced by the commission and by the cross. That is 
the carryfng of the water and bread of life to the ends of earth. 

The commission which embodied the active ministry of Christ while 
on earth, was illustrated again in the missionary life and ministry of 
Paul, “the Apostle of the Gentiles.” In Paul’s missionary work the Holy 
Spirit interpreted to the churches of all times the meaning and intent 
of Christ’s commission; for Paul’s life incarnated in itself the spirit of 
that message of Jesus to the ages. 

If the need in missionary work to-day is not less money or fewer men— 
and we do need more of both—what shall be said of the need there is 
that the church of Christ should have a truer, broader, fuller conception 
of the moral basis—of the divine idea of missions? What is more needed 


18 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


in our missionary efforts than that our churches should be guided by 
that faith that will lead us to plan our work first and foremost from the 
divine, rather than from the financial side of missions. This is not 
mysticism. Faith in God precedes our faith in men. The Holy Spirit 
is before the ‘‘Almighty dollar” in God’s work. 

This is not saying that the work of missions has not a money basis— 
it has; but before that it has a moral basis. Money must have a moral 
as well as a commercial value in a Christian’s hand. We need to be 
careful that the evangelizing worth of a dollar is not determined, in our 
plans, by the commercial value of that dollar. All the gold on earth, 
multiplied by all the currency that is based upon it, could not convert 
the meanest bushman of South Africa, without the supplemental influ¬ 
ence of the Holy Spirit. 

If we expect God to work with us we must see to it that we, first of 
all, are working with Him. 

When Constantine was laying out Constantinople, and some one re¬ 
buked him for the extravagance of his plans his reply was, “I am follow¬ 
ing Him who is leading me.” So also when Napoleon was slashing at 
the map before him outlining his Austrian campaign and his uncle 
criticised his daring ambition, Napoleon, flinging open his window and 
pointing to the noonday sky, replied, “Sire, do you see that star?” “No,” 
said the uncle. “Well,” said Napoleon, “I do, and I shall follow it, for 
that is the star of my destiny.” So, with our eyes upon the cross, let us 
obey our Lord’s commission and by so doing demonstrate our right to 
call ourselves His disciples. 

We must recognize this Mastership of Jesus, over us, before we can 
accept his commission in any such sense as it should be accepted. It was 
this acknowledged mastership of the Christ that made the Apostolic 
church invincible. This must inspire and nerve the modern church if it 
rises to the realization of the magnificent possibilities of the work of 
modern missions. 

We have for a long time been troubled about how many of our churches 
can give to missions. Is that the question before us? No, no, the vital 
question is, how can they hope to live if they do not give to missions? not 
grudgingly, but as freely as they have received. 

Our State Boards which are laboring so earnestly to bring weak 
churches up to a self-support must not stop at that, for this is only a 
means to an end. The church of Christ must be a self-propagating, as 
well as a self-supporting church. Christlieb was right when he said 
that missions demand of the church a three-fold conversion. (1.) The 
conversion of the heart in order to right affections. (2.) The conversion 
of the head in order to right conceptions. (3.) The conversion of the 
purse in order to make ample provisions. We all know that it is death 
to try to live on one’s breath. This is the policy of a self-contained 
church or a selfish Christian. 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


19 


The commission therefore places every disciple of Jesus under an obli¬ 
gation to evangelize, as solemn as if they held in their hand the pardon 
of a condemned prisoner and were commanded to bear it to him before 
his sentence is executed. 

In the darkness of that hour, that precedes the day’s dawn, a tourist 
stood upon Riffleburg, that rises far above the Valley of Zermat, waiting 
for the coming of the morning .upon the Alps. At length above the 
thick night that filled the valley like an ocean of blackness, above the 
sentinel peaks that stood cloaked with shadow, and silent in their soli¬ 
tude, the coming day flung out the grey banners of her advance. Soon 
the peaks, putting off the garments of the night, began to assume the royal 
robes of day. And as the gates of the East opened, these peaks, catch¬ 
ing upon their icey sides, as upon mirrors, the light of the breaking 
morning, began to be transfigured into towers of gorgeous splendor, as 
they rose among the clouds, which were changing from leaden heaps 
into piles of crimson and gold that grouped themselves about those 
mountain towers, as if they were the descending thrones of the four and 
twenty elders, while 

“Jocund day stood tip-toe 
On the misty mountain tops.” 

The descending light fell upon the gathered darkness of the valley as 
it rolled down, and along the floor of the valley shattered into light like 
the rising dust beneath the chariot’s wheels. The morning had come 
and the night was gone. 

So we stand here, this centennial morning, upon the glorious heights 
of this first century of modern missions! watching and waiting for that 
blessed hope, the appearing of our God and Savior Jesus Christ; and, 
from this centennial mountain top, we cry, watchman, what of the 
night? And the answer comes back to us in the thick darkness of 
heathen ignorance and superstition and in the chilly shadows of vice 
that hang its night around us. Again we cry, watchman, what of the 
night? And in the dawn that hangs its splendors about the cross and 
the future, we hear the answer, “the morning cometh.” We wait, 
and again, with uplifted hope, we cry, watchman, what of the night? 
And we are thrilled as we hear the answer, “the day cometh.” Yes, as 
once across the wave lashed Tiber the Christ came to his disciples, 
treading the surging billows, so, across the centuries He comes again. 
He who with his coming shall bring the blessed day promised by the 
prophets—the day for which his redeemed church has been toiling, 
praying, waiting, and hoping. 

Even so, come Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen, 


20 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


At 3 p.m., Sunday, there was a mass meeting addressed by 
Rev. R. H. Harris, D.D., of Columbus, Ga., on 

Are the Heathen “Lost Without the Gospel?” 

Text: “He that hath the Son, hath life; hut he that hath not the Son of 
God , hath not life —I. Jno. 5:12. 

If words have any meaning, the question would seem to be answered, 
as soon as asked. Indeed, it is strange that, with the open Bible before 
us, there should be any such question. But, that there is such a ques¬ 
tion, in the minds of many excellent people, cannot be denied. Perhaps 
not a very great many entertain a decided conviction , in the negative: but 
a comparatively large number of persons are honestly in doubt —and, with 
most of them, so far as effects their practical conduct , doubt is tantamount 
to conviction. 

Of people whose views are not affirmative, there are two general 
classes: 1st. Those who in the goodness of their hearts, would fain hope 
that, in some mysterious way, unrevealed to us, the benighted multitudes 
of earth may be saved, notwithstanding their ignorance of the Bible plan 
of salvation: 2d. Those who, in their meanness and stinginess of heart, 
are glad to favor any doctrine that will excuse them from the conscious 
duty of contributing money to the Lord’s work. Kind-heartedness, on 
the one hand, and covetousness on the other, are the totally dissimilar 
influences which produce precisely the same result upon moral char¬ 
acters, otherwise entirely unlike. 

Some who are prejudiced in the negative, and others whose minds are 
merely doubtful, are unwilJing to hear this question discussed, apparently 
lest their convictions may be disturbed or their doubts removed; while 
others, still, already know more upon this, or almost any other sub¬ 
ject, than any one under heaven can tell them.—Prov. xxvi:I2,I6. So, 
among them, they either absent themselves, altogether, on occasions 
when this topic is to be discoursed upon, or else they attend with self- 
blinded eyes and stopped-up ears, determined not to be moved. 

But the spectre ‘‘will not down at bidding” and a real issue confronts us 
that must be met, in a spirit of honest inquiry after the truth. This done, 
we may confidently leave the result to God, regardless of indifference or 
opposition, in any quarter. 

If the negative be true, and the heathen are not lost without the gos¬ 
pel, then, the greatest calamity that we could inflict upon them would 
be to send them the news of salvation in Christ. We are so unfortunate 
as to have heard of Jesus! and, while some of us will be saved in Him, 
most of us are destined to be lost, because we have heard. Now, in loving 
pity toward our benighted fellow-men, let us conceal this fatal news from 
them. And, to be consistent, let us do more. We love our children, and 


Of modern missions. 


21 


we are deeply concerned about the generations yet unborn. Let us burn 
up all the Bibles, raze the church buildings to the ground or convert 
them into dance halls and theatres, extirpate the preachers, bind our¬ 
selves by inviolable oaths to eternal silence upon the most dangerous 
subject, and die with the fatal secret locked up in our bosoms—that our 
little children and the generations yet to come may enjoy equal blessings 
with heathen murderers and cannibals, and all be saved! 

Any other course than this must be illogical and cruel, if the advocates 
of the negative doctrine are right in their position. Almost as cruel as 
God has been, in subjecting His pure and innocent Son to an ignominious 
life and a horrible death, to insure the fiery torments of an eternal hell, 
to most of the miserable wretches who are so supremely unfortunate as 
to hear of Him! 

But private opinions upon this subject are entirely immaterial, unless 
sustained by reason based upon the Word of God. The real and great 
question is: What saith the Lord? The Bible should be our only guide. 
Its teachings must be accepted and its commandments obeyed, whether 
we understand God’s motives and purposes, or not. 

In this view, let us consider the last commandment of Christ: “Go ye, 
therefore, and teach all nations,” Matt. xxviii:19; “Go ye into all the 
world and preach the gospel to every creature,” Mark xvi:15. Why 
“therefore”? Jesus had said: “All power is given to me in heaven and 
in earth,” Matt. xxviii:I8—I have breathed my spirit into you—I have 
finished my work in my flesh, and I am going home—but I have com¬ 
mitted the full accomplishment of that work to you, pledging my Divine 
power to sustain you—now, “therefore,” do it. Why “go”? Because 
His work was for the benefit of the world—“God so loved the world,” 
Jno. iii:16, and movement, outward, from the initial centre, was neces¬ 
sary, to “teach” “the world” of mankind “the way” of life that had been 
opened up for those who should walk in it. “Go, ye,” all ye, who have my 
spirit and my pledged power, for ye are qualified, “and teach all na¬ 
tions”—not merely those which are contiguous to Judea, but “into all 
the world,” as is more explicitly stated by Mark. “Ye shall be witnesses 
unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto 
the uttermost part of the earth,” Acts i:8. Mark also individualizes this 
teaching. The messengers of Jesus are not merely to plant the banner 
of the cross on every nation’s shore and “proclaim the gospel of the king¬ 
dom,” in every national capital in “all the world,” but they are to carry 
their message to each individual— as expressed in the language, “every 
creature.” 

What is the “gospel?” Good news. The term is compounded of two 
Anglo-Saxon words—“god,” good, and “spell,” story or tidings. Hence, 
the Scripture expression, “glad tidings of great joy.” What is the best 
news to a drowning man? That a rescuer is at hand. What is the glad¬ 
dest tidings to the dying patient? Of a physician who can and will heal. 


22 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


Of what, is the “good news,” that the messengers of Jesus are to carry 
to “every creature”? Of salvation. Why do I say so? “The gospel of 
Christ is the power of God unto salvation ,” Rom. i:16. 

This “good news” is of salvation to whom? To the lost. “The Son of 
Man is come to save that which was lost,” Matt, xviiiill. “The Son of 
Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” Luke xix:10. “To 
seek,” means to hunt for. Effort is necessary, both on the part of Jesus, 
Himself, and on the part of His messengers. Those who “have His 
spirit” must “go” forth “into all the nations of the world,” “seeking,” in 
that spirit, for the individuals, whom God hath “predestinated to be 
conformed to the image of His Son,” Rom. viii:29. 

Who are lost? All men. “Death passed upon all men, for that all have 
sinned,” Rom. v:12; “the wages of sin is death,” Rom. vi:23; “we (Chris¬ 
tians), were by nature the children of wrath, even as others,” (the unre¬ 
generate, Or heathens,) Eph. ii:3. The God of “foreknowledge and for- 
ordination,” the God of “predestination,” has declared that all men, 
naturally, “are under the curse,” Gal. iii:10—that “by the offense of one, 
judgment hath come upon all men, to condemnation,” Rom. v:18—and 
that His people, saved from among the lost, are “elect, through sancti¬ 
fication of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus 
Christ,” 1 Pet. i:2. 

Now, who are the heathen? There are only three classes of animated 
creatures known to us: 1, Angels; 2, Men; 3, Beasts. Under the term, 
beasts, I include, for this occasion, all cretures, from the highest brute, 
to the lowest form of animal life. Are the heathen angels? None will 
assert it. Are they beasts? Blood analysis will settle the questian. The 
red corpuscles in human blood, every scientific physician knows, are dif¬ 
ferent from those in the blood of any other animal. The blood disks in 
all animals of the canine family are similar, and so, with the felines, or 
members of the cat family, and so, also, with all other genera, of the 
lower orders; but none of these resemble corresponding disks in human 
blood—and the corpuscles are found to be precisely alike, in all the races 
of mankind. God “hath made of one blood, all nations of men, for to 
dwell on all the face of the earth,” Acts xvii:26. Not that all are white 
men—or all black men—or all brown or red men—but that all are men — 
homo, human. “All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of 
flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes and another of 
birds,” 1 Cor. xv:39. Cannibalism was proved upon certain dead mem¬ 
bers of the Greeley expedition, by the presence, in their stomachs, of 
the striped tissue, which is peculiar to human muscle. The flesh and 
blood of the heathens are found to be of identically the same kind, as ours. 
The heathen, therefore, are men. 

If men, the heathen are lost, in common with other men, “for there is no 
respect of persons, with God,” Rom. ii:ll, and, therefore, Christ “came 
to seek and to save them ,” since “there is no difference,” Rom. iii:22. 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


23 


The question now occurs, will any men be saved? In the light of Scrip¬ 
ture, I answer, yes. Who? Let the Scriptures answer: “He that be- 
lieveth and is baptized shall be saved,” Mark xvi:16; “Whosoever shall 
call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved,” Rom. x:13-and every 
intelligent person knows that the word “Lord,” whenever applied to 
the Deity, in the Scriptures, either means Christ, directly, or includes 
the idea of Christ, with God—; “For God gave his only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life,” Jno. iii:16. 

Another question now presents itself: Is there any means of salvation, 
outside of Christ, intimated in the Bible? The Scriptures , themselves, 
are emphatic, in the negative: “Neither is there salvation in any other, 
for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby 
we must be saved,” Acts iv:12—the language is most positive, “must”; 
and “he that believeth not shall be damned,” Mark xvi:16. 

If there were any other means, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was unnec¬ 
essary: “For if righteousness come by the law (works), then Christ is 
dead in vain,” Gal. ii:21. “For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and 
that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any 
man should boast,” Eph. ii:8,9. Salvation is of God, through the gift of 
grace, by faith in Christ, also His gift, and all this, men may “despise,” 
to their own damnation. Rom. ii. 4-6. On the other hand, if any, 
heathens or others, can be saved by “honestly doing the best they 
know,” they will “have whereof to boast,” and will have a right to march 
up to heaven’s gates, flying the banner of “good works” and demand 
admittance! 

Then, consider what a reflection such a doctrine casts upon God’s 
business capacity! I speak of Him, most reverently. He declares that 
He has exhausted heaven’s treasury, plucked the priceless jewel from 
His own heart, and with “the Brightness of His own glory,” purchased 
human salvation; and yet millions of men are saved by their own efforts 
to “do the best they can, with the lights before them,” and buy their sal¬ 
vation at a price infinitely cheaper than God has paid! The Omniscient God 
has actually been out-traded , by some of His ignorant, finite creatures 
and has spent His All, for what might have been, by Him, and by'others 
is, bought at an infinitely lower price! Such is the horrible absurdity 
into which such a doctrine leads. 

“But,” asks one, “do not the Scriptures declare that ‘the heathen are 
a law unto themselves’ and that ‘they shall be beaten with few stripes’ ”? 
Let us see. “That servant which knew his lord’s will and prepared not 
himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many 
stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, 
shall be beaten with few stripes,” Luke xii:47,48. There appears, here, 
to be “no difference,” so far as the fact of punishment is concerned, 
Neither is saved from punishment. “For there is no respect of persons, 


24 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 

with God. For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish 
without law, and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by 
the law,” * * * ‘’in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, 
by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel,” Rom. ii:ll, 12,16. Here, again, 
it is manifest that “there is no difference.” Those who have not the 
law “perish,” whether the “stripes” be “many” or “few, ’ and “the secrets 
of (all) men are judged (alike) by Jesus Christ, according to the gospel.” 
The heathen, then, who are “without the gospel,” are not justified by 
that fact. If, as in the suppositional case, parenthetically introduced by 
the apostle, “the Gentiles—or heathen—who have not the law, (should) 
do, by nature, the things contained in the law, they (would be) a law 
unto themselves, showing the work of the law written.in their hearts’ 
and being “accused or excused by one another,” accordingly. Or, as 
more accurately interpreted: “Whenever the heathen do * * * they 
are a law unto themselves, * * * inasmuch as they show, etc.” The 
idea being, according to one of our foremost scholars, that “the heathen, 
in every discrimination between right and wrong, show consciousness of 
moral law and are, therefore, justly condemned for not keeping the law 
they have.” 

But the hypothetical case alluded to is impossible, in view of this 
emphatic language, by the same inspired apostle who wrote the other 
words: “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not 
subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be,” Rom. viii:7. Where, 
in all history, is the record of a single man, who, “by nature did the 
things contained in the law? ” I defy the world to 'produce one example. The 
purest heathen I ever heard of—Socrates—died a suicide—a deliberate 
self-murderer! 

I think the passages quoted in this connection do teach the doctrine of 
‘‘degrees of punishment,” but there can be no question that they also 
emphasize the doctrine that all who cannot pass the test of judgment by 
the gospel of Christ will be certainly and impartially punished. 

The former doctrine just alluded to, is not a doctrine of grades. I 
think the Scriptures indicate degrees of happiness in heaven, as well as 
degrees of misery, in hell, the difference in experience of the one or the 
other depending rather on capacity than position. A homely figure may 
illustrate this point. A row of vessels, of different sizes, are placed 
upon a shelf—one holding ten gallons, one five, one two and so on, down, 
through quarts, pints and gills, to one that can hold only a thimbleful. 
When filled, they are all full, the thimble vessel as full as the ten gallon 
vessel—every one as full as it can be and all standing on the same level— 
or grade—and yet the largest vessel contains many times more than the 
smallest. The difference is one of capacity, altogether. That old saint 
who has “spent and been spent,” in the service of God—for the dear 
Lord’s sake—has buried all her loved ones and now, widowed and alone, 
is dying in poverty, upon a pallet of straw—starved to death for the want 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


25 


of both food add friendship, and yet who has been devoted and faithful 
in all things, will possess a larger capacity for happiness, in heaven, 
than many an orderly Christian who has been merely “correct in his 
walk” and has suffered little or none, for Jesus’ sake. Just so, capacities 
will differ, in the nether world, and, thus, there may be a difference in 
the number of “stripes”; but there can be “no difference” in the character 
of the penalty, nor in the period of its duration—if the Scriptures are 
true. 

The Bible teaches salvation by “repentance and faith.” “In those 
days, came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and 
saying, Repent, ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” Matt. iii:l,2. 
“The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand—repent, ye, 
and believe the gospel,” Mark i:15. “Now, God commandeth all men, 
everywhere, to repent,” Acts xvii:30. “Except ye repent, ye shall all 
perish,” Luke xiii:3. “John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach 
baptism of repentance, for the remission of sins,” Mark i:4. “Testify¬ 
ing, both to the Jews and also to the Ghreeks, repentance toward God and 
faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,” Acts xx:21. (Now, every well- 
informed person knows that the terms, “Gentiles.” “Greeks,” etc., as 
used by New Testament writers, in contradistinction to “the Jews,” 
mean the heathen. For example, “The gospel of Christ is the power of 
God, unto salvation, to every one that believeth—to the Jew, first, and 
also, to the Greek,” Rom. i:16.) Then, to continue: “Repent and be bap¬ 
tized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of 
sins,” Acts ii:38. (And many different nationalities of former heathens 
had just before this, heard and heeded the same exhortation, from all 
the apostles.) “Repent, ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins 
may be blotted out,” Acts iii:19. “Thus it behooved that repentance and 
remission of sins should be preached in His name, among all nations, be¬ 
ginning at Jerusalem,” Luke xxiv:47. 

Now, it cannot justly be denied that the same “gospel of repentance and 
faith” was ordained to be proclaimed to all people alike—“beginning at 
Jerusalem,” obviously because it was necessary to commence, somewhere, 
and God, in His absolute sovereignty, had seen fit to “elect” the Jews as 
the first recipients of His divine message of salvation. 

Now, “the gospel of ignorance, as Dr. Gibson calls it, is thus combated 
and disposed of by the Scriptures. “For therein is the righteousness of 
God revealed, from faith to faith; as it is written. The just shall live by 
faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven, against all un¬ 
godliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unright¬ 
eousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them— 
for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him, 
from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the 
things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead: so that they 
are without excuse. Because that, when they knew God, they glorified 


26 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


Him not * * * and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into 
an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed 
beasts and creeping things. Wherefore, God also gave them up to un¬ 
cleanness and, even as they did not like to retain God in their knowl¬ 
edge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind,” Rom. i:17—28. “For we 
have, before, proved, both Jews and Gentiles , that they are all under sin. 

* * * There is none that seeketh after God * * * There is no fear 
of God before their eyes. * * * N^>w we know that what things soever 
the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth 
may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. There¬ 
fore, by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight. 

* * * The righteousness of God is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all 
and upon all that believe - for there is no difference —for all have sinned and 
come short of the glory of God,” Rom. iii:9—23. “For, with the heart, 
man believeth, unto righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is 
made unto salvation; * * * for there is no difference between the 
Jew and the Greek. * * * So, then, faith cometh by hearing and 
hearing by the Word of God,” Rom. x: 10-17. “If any man sin, we have 
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous; and He is the 
propitiation for our sins—and not for ours only, but also for the sms of the 
whole world,” 1 Jno. ii:l,2. “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto 
thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of Goch 

* * * That which is born of the flesh, is flesh, and that which is born 
of the Spirit, is spirit. Marvel not, that I said unto thee, Ye must be 
born again,” Jno. iii:3-7. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, 
is born of God,” 1 Jno. v:l. “He that hath the Son, hath life; and he 
that hath not the Son of God, hath not life,” 1 Jno. v:12. “Beeause He 
hath appointed a day, in the which; He will judge the world, in right¬ 
eousness, by that man whom He hath ordained; whereof, He hath given 
assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead,” 
Acts xvii:31. 

How can any man stand before this tidal wave of Scripture, declaring 
with all the emphasis of Divine inspiration, the essentiality to salvation, of 
repentance and faith in Christ, and the necessity of a “ new birth,” and still 
maintain that the heathen are saved by virtue of ignorance ? 

Some of us have been challenged to prove the affirmative of the propo¬ 
sition before us, by the Bible. I have given you the Scriptures, by 
which Paul declares that it is proved. Now no man can safely gainsay 
the teaching of God’s Word. There is no dearth of proof-texts. The 
question, with me, has been and still is, How little, out of the abundance, 
to content myself with. I find no pleasure in contemplating the woeful 
condition of the benighted heathen; but I must accept the declarations 
of God, howsoever saddening to my soul. 

And then, heartsick and sorrowful, in the midst of the gloom, I turn 
and scan the heavens, for a ray of light. Nor do I look in vain. “Arise! 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


27 


shine! for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon 
thee. The Gentiles shall come to thy light and kings to the brightness 
of thy rising. Thy sons shall come from far and thy daughters shall be 
nursed at thy side,” Isa. 60:1,3,4. Into the “gross darkness,” light is 
streaming, from the glorious personality of the promised Messiah. A 
Savior who, although a Jew, felt the blood of Gentiles coursing through 
His veins and in His Moabite ancestress, Ruth, was literally akin to the 
heathen world. 

In Him, an adequate redemption is provided and the mortgage of Satan 
may be lifted. An arrangement is perfected for our rescue “out of the 
snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him, at his will,” 2 Tim. 
ii:26, and although all men in common with the Apostle Paul, are “car¬ 
nal (and by nature) sold under sin,” Rom. vii:14, we anticipate freedom, 
in the assurance of Him who spoke in the prophecy: “The Spirit of the 
Lord God is upon me, because che Lord hath anointed me to preach good 
tidings unto the meek. He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, 
to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them 
that are bound,” Isa. lxi:l. 

But are we concerned in this matter, any farther than in our own 
emancipation? If it is true that “we are workers together with God,” 
2 Cor. vi:l, we are. The heathen are lost. There is no way “unto the 
Father, but by (Christ),” Jno. xiv:6. “Without faith (in Christ), it is 
impossible to please (God),” Heb. xi:6. “How shall they (the unregen¬ 
erate of the world) call on Him, in whom they have not believed? and 
how shall they believe in Him, of whom they have not heard? and how 
shall they hear, without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except 
they be sent? * * * So, then, faith cometh by hearing and hearing 
by the Word of God,” Rom. x:14-17. This is God’s plan of redemption. 
If we have the Truth, it is our duty “to make known the mystery of the 
gospel,” Eph. vi:19; for, “according to the commandment of the ever¬ 
lasting God (this mystery, Rom. xvi:25, must be) made known to all na¬ 
tions, for the obedience of faith” Rom. xvi:26. The parable of “The Good 
Samaritan,” Luke x:27-37, shows us who is our neighbor and our duty to 
him. According to that, “I am debtor, both to the Greeks and to the 
Barbarians—both to the wise and to the unwise. So as much as in me 
is, I” (should be) “ready to preach the gospel to (those) that are in 
(heathen) Rome, also,” Rom. i:14,15. tf I cannot “go,” I must “send.” 
This is the Spirit of Christ, and “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ 
he is none of His,” Rom. viii:9. God says to His people, “Ye are not your 
own _f or ye are bought with a price; therefore, glorify God, in your 
body and in your spirit, which are God’s,” 1 Cor. vi:19,20. “Whereunto, 
He called you, by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord 
Jesus Christ,” 2 Thess. ii:14. The question of our fidelity is raised in 
this issue. “Ye are my friends , if ye do whatsoever 1 command you,” 
Jno. xv:14. “If ye love me, keep my commandments,” Jno. xiv:15. “If 


28 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


a man love me, he will keep my words,” Jno. xiv:23. Wha,jb is His part¬ 
ing commandment? “Go, ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing 
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” 
Matt. xxviii:19. As this is the test of our friendship , so it is the condition, 
upon which is based the assurance of His continual presence with us: “And, 
lo! I am with you, alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” Matt. 
xxviii:20. “Go, bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the 
ends of the earth. Let all the nations be gathered. * * * And they 
shall bring all your brethren, for an offering unto the Lord, out of all 
nations ,” Isa. xliii:6-9. “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be 
preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations,” Matt. xxiv:14. 
“Thou art my Son * * * and I shall give thee the heathen for thine 
inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth, for thy possession,” 
Ps. ii:7,8; “The kingdoms of this world (shall) become the kingdoms of 
our Lord and of His Christ,” Rev. xi:15; “For, after that, in the wisdom 
of God, the world, by (its) wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the 
foolishness of preaching , to save them that believe ,” 1 Cor. i:21. But “how 
shall (the heathen) hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, 
except they be sent? ” Rom. x:14,I5. 

We have been listening to mingled promises and warnings, but now 
the warnings deepen: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, 
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my 
Father which is in heaven,” Matt. vii:21. “For whosoever shall do the 
will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister,” 
Matt. xii:50. “Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not (my will) 
unto one of the least (most obscure) of these (the needy), ye did it not 
unto me,” Matt. xxv:45. “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it 
not, to him, it is sin,” James iv:17. “If the watchman see the sword 
come, and blow not the trumpet and the people be not warned, if the 
sword come and take any person from among them, he is taken away in 
his iniquity—but his blood will be required at the watchman’s hand. 
When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die! if 
thou dost not speak, to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man 
shall die in his iniquity—but his blood will I require at thine hand,” 
Ezek. xxxiii:6,8. 

The heathen, like all other men, by nature, are lost— according to the 
Scriptures. The gospel offers the only means of salvation provided for any 
man—according to the Scriptures. We have received “the unspeakable 
gift,” 2 Cor. ix:15, and we can refuse to offer its provisions to our be¬ 
nighted neighbor, only at our own pen?—according to the Scriptures. 
What should we do? “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in 
all the world. If we will not carry it, or send it, we shall be removed out 
of the way and others will accept the mission. The avalanche is coming 
and if we oppose it, or merely stand still, in the way, we shall be swept from 
the face of the earth I The Lord “will work and who shall hinder it?” 
Isa. xliii:I3. 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


29 


But the doctrine has been promulgated, that “the commission expired 
with the last one of the eleven disciples who witnessed the Lord’s 
ascension! ” That is the last dodge of impotent heterodoxy! If that be true, 
why did “the eleven” immediately elect Matthias to the vacancy left by 
Judas? and that, too, under the express command of Jesus that there 
“must one be ordained to be a witness with (them) of His resurrection,” 
Acts i:22. With the same propriety, could it be claimed that the 
“Lord’s Supper” was to be celebrated only by “the eleven”—“till He 
come,” 1 Cor. xi:26. If that doctrine be true, why did Paul go out as a 
missionary to the heathen, twenty years later? Why, too, did Barnabas 
and Silas and others engage in similar undertakings? Above all, why 
did Jesus promise to be with those to whom the commission was given, 
“alway, even unto the end of the world? ” Were “the eleven” to live in 
the world until the end of it? If so, where are they now? The expression, 
literally translated, reads, “through all the days,” etc. Where are “the 
eleven,” in these days? Are they still “going everywhere, preaching the 
Word” and perpetuating the Supper, “in remembrance of (Him)?” I 
denounce the heresy and I am gravely suspicious of its teachers. 

In support of the assumption that the commission expired with “the 
eleven,” it is urged that “signs were to follow” their preaching (Mark 
xvi:17,18), and as such “signs” do not follow the converts of present day 
missionaries, that, therefore, they are not Divinely authorized to under¬ 
take such work. As well might it be claimed that all those who have 
been “preaching the Word,” from the day of Timothy down to the pres¬ 
ent time, have proceeded without the Divine warrant, because, forsooth, 
the miracles which attended the ministry of Jesus, whose call (Acts 
xiii:2), they profess to obey, do not accompany their ministry. Miracles 
were deemed necessary to attest the Divinity of Christ, Jno. iv:48, and 
miracles appear also to have been deemed necessary, for a time after the 
Savior’s death, to prove to gainsayers that His Divine power was not 
extinguished in the sepulchre, Acts ii:43; vi:8. That is all. The Lord 
thus rebukes those who demand supernatural manifestations, where God 
does not see proper to give them, of His own accord: “An evil and adul¬ 
terous generation seeketh after a sign and there shall no sign be given,” 
Matt. xii:39. The power of His presence was promised to His ministers, 
“through all the days”— not the proof of that power, in miracles. 

Some endeavor to drag the question of infant salvation into this issue; 
but it is no more involved herein than is the question of church disci¬ 
pline, or of Lord’s Day observance. Sufficient reason for believing that 
infants are saved is to be found in the Scriptures— the children of heathens, 
as well as others^- but we are discussing the question, as it affects persons 
of maturer years. And this is, doubtless, well understood by those cav- 
ilers who spring the other question, solely to complicate the case. 

Now, upon the real issue, let us hear the testimony of Dr. Graves, whose 
residence of over thirty years among the heathen renders valuable his 


30 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


evidence, upon the question under discussion. “What,” he asks, “is the 
condition of the heathen? Where will you find the men ‘who do the 
best they know how’? Heathen sages deny that there are any such men. 
The heathen admit that their sins far outweigh their morality. If men 
are saved on account of their morality, the whole gospel system is a mis¬ 
take and we are saved by works, and not by grace. While God has 
‘included all under sin,’ He has also provided a remedy for all. Yet its 
application is made dependent upon human agency. The Bible clearly 
teaches that the salvation of all men depends on their ‘hearing’ and ‘be¬ 
lieving’ the gospel. How great the responsibility, resting upon us! 
What is the doom of the heathen? Lost! lost! without the gospel. 
What will be our doom, if we withhold it from them”? 

Not that anything “can separate us from the love of God in Christ,” 
Rom. viii:39. God’s “elect” cannot be “plucked out of His hand.” Jno. 
x:28,29. But the question is, Are those who dose their eyes against the plain 
teachings of the Bible, or who willfully disobey those teachings , when under¬ 
stood, of the elect, at all ? It is high time to cease palavering. We have 
heard quite enough about “our good brethren who do not agree with us 
upon the subject of missions.” God’s people may ignorantly fall short of 
duty, in many particulars, but “the true Israel of God” will not persist in 
willful disobedience. 

In opposition to foreign missions, it has been falsely said that it costs 
ten dollars to convey ten cents to the heathen, and a great complaint has 
been made against “so much machinery,” in our missionary enterprises. 
Our boards correspond to directorates in railroads, banks and other 
legitimate enterprises, our secretaries correspond to their secretaries, 
cashiers, etc., and no large business, of any kind, can be successfully 
conducted, without such officials. Our officials are Christian gentlemen. 
How dare any man charge them with dishonesty, or a misappropriation 
of funds. The expense of the “machinery” is comparatively small and the 
difference (in our favor) in value between domestic currency and foreign 
exchange is sometimes sufficient to pay all expenses and still leave a premium 
to be added to the original contribution. I noticed this difference in money 
values, particularly, on two different visits to Mexico, six or seven years 
apart. On one of those visits, I found that a United States dollar was 
worth one dollar twelve a half cents in Mexican money, of purer silver. 
At that time, you might have rolled your missionary dollar toward 
Mexico and after paying all commissions, it would have entered the coun¬ 
try of the Montezumas, worth seven or eight or, possibly, nine cents 
more than it was when it left your hand l And to-day, as I am reliably in¬ 
formed, the premium is from thirty-five to thirty-nine per cent.! And a 
similar state of things is said to be true, with reference to some other 
foreign countries. “What hath God wrought,” to rebuke gainsayers and 
cavilers l 

Even if the false allegation referred to were true, it would furnish no 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


31 


proof that the heathen are not lost, without the gospel, but would only- 
show that their evangelization is more difficult, to us , than we have found 
it really to be. And, further, even if it should cost one-half the money 
contributed—or three-fourths, or nine-tenths —to make the remainder 
available, in sustaining missionaries and providing the heathen with the 
printed gospel, it would be money well spent. Statistics show that souls 
are thus saved— and who can estimate the value of a human 
soul? 

Rev. John Newcomb, missionary for twelve years among 
the Telugus, gave some interesting facts concerning his field. 
During the past year, three thousand converts have been 
baptized. The Christians come, for the most part, from the 
lowest caste, who are dirty and down-trodden. But Chris, 
tianity leads to cleanliness and honesty. Bro. Newcomb has 
been informed that so far during the great famine on the 
Cumbum field, not one of the eight thousand converts has 
gone back to heathenism. Out of the depth of their poverty 
they made a present of fifty rupees to Bro. Newcomb on his 
departure for America. 


32 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


SECOND DAY. 


Monday Morning, October 3. 

At 9:30 o’clock devotional exercises were held, The sing¬ 
ing was under the leadership of Capt. John H. Weller, who 
selected the old- hymns and sang them with spirit. Prayer 
was made by Brethren J. S. Coleman, J. Wm. Jones, John 
R. Sampey, W. H. Williams and Robert Ryland. 

Rev. W. H. Williams, D.D., of the Central Baptist , being 
called out by Dr. Ryland, made a speech of encouragement. 
He reminded us that modern missions in England began in a 
cobbler’s shop, and in America beside a hay-stack. We ought 
to draw encouragement from the promises of God and from 
the privilege of prayer. 

Dr. Tichenor, Secretary of the Home Board, spoke on 

THE NEEDS OF THE HOME MISSION BOARD. 

At the last session of the Southern Baptist Convention, the State 
Board of Louisiana memorialized it with reference to the great destitu¬ 
tion in that State. The facts contained in that memorial were not over¬ 
stated, the picture was not overdrawn and the conclusion reached was 
that in the State of Louisiana, with only about one million of people, two 
hundred and fifty thousand of its inhabitants were living- and dying- with¬ 
out the gospel. The request they made of the Convention was that the 
Home Mission Board should, if possible, appropriate to the State of 
Louisiana, during the coming year, not less than Ten Thousand Dollars. 
This would have been a small sum compared to its needs. Ten Thousand 
Dollars to supply the spiritual destitution of two hundred and fifty thou¬ 
sand souls—Ten Dollars for each two hundred and fifty—One Dollar for 
each twenty-five—four cents apiece to meet their spiritual necessities. 
Surely, the most economical among our brethren would not deem this an 
extravagant supply. 

No opportunity was given in the Convention to compare the needs of 
Louisiana with those of any other part of our territory. Had there 
been, it would have been easy to show that Louisiana was not the most 
destitute of the fields of the Homo Mission Board. There is a large 



OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


33 


scope of country equally as needy, and some parts of it whose spiritual 
necessities far exceed those of that State. I do not hesitate to say that 
the destitution of Arkansas, though not confined to one particular part 
of the State as it is in Louisiana, but scattered throughout its entire do¬ 
main, is fully equal to that of Louisiana. 

Then the German population in Missouri, located along the valley of 
the great Missouri river, stretching from St. Louis to Kansas City, 
nearly eight hundred thousand in number, among whom no Baptist or¬ 
ganization is at work except the Home Mission Board of the Southern 
Baptist Convention, presents to us a Restitution far greater than that of 
Louisiana. In the equitable distribution of the funds committed to it by 
the churches, the Home Mission Board has been able to furnish to this 
field only about $4,000 per annum. $4,000 for eight hundred thousand 
people—$4.00 for every eight hundred—four cents for every eight—one- 
half a cent a piece is all the Board has been able to give to relieve the 
spiritual wants of these people. 

Then look at the Indian Territory, at Oklahoma, at the Pan Handle 
of Texas, at the territory bordering on the Rio Grande, and you have a 
field of destitution a thousand miles long and five hundred miles wide, 
whose spiritual needs are surely equal if not greater than those of 
Louisiana. 

Florida, from Jacksonville to Pensacola, and from St. Augustine to 
Key West, is almost one unbroken field for missionary effort. 

Cuba, with an area equal to the State of Alabama, and with a popula¬ 
tion fully as great, is occupied by us only in and near its great capital 
city, Havana. The whole island is open to us, and several of its princi¬ 
pal cities are crying to us for help. Cein Fuegos, Santa Clara, Cardenas, 
Puerto Principe and other points have appealed to us to come over and 
help them. The meager resources of the Board have scarcely enabled 
it to sustain, the mission work already organized in that island. We are 
spending about $6,000 per annum to sustain the missionaries among the 
millions that look to us for help. That was a remarkable providence 
which seems to have thrown the entire work of spreading the gospel in 
this island upon the Southern Baptist Convention. Missions had been 
planted in Havana, and possibly at other points, by other denominations. 
The Episcopalians have tried to evangelize Cuba, but their efforts have 
proved unsuccessful, and they have abandoned the field. The Presby¬ 
terians followed their example with a like result. The Methodists have 
accomplished nothing. After the planting and the successful beginning 
of our Baptiit missions, the other denominations were encouraged to 
renew their efforts, but so far the result^ have not been encouraging. 
God seems to have commited to our Baptist people the evangelization of 
this island. The marvelous providences by which He has opened to us 
these doors of usefulness, and furnished us men from among the’native 
population tQ carry forward this great work, must strike every mind as 


34 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


the most remarkable indication of His will that we, to say the least of it, 
shall lead all others in the overthrow of that ecclesiastical despotism 
which for centuries has held in its chains of galling bondage the souls 
and bodies of men and women living upon that beautiful island. 

That other remarkable providence by which God centuries ago brought 
into the midst of this fair land of ours and associated with our people, 
the African race in the development of our material interest, and made 
many of them domestics at our firesides—that bound these two races to¬ 
gether in bounds of mutual sympathy so strong that it required the over¬ 
throw of revolution, and the thupderbolts of war to tear them asunder, 
points out our duty to them so clearly that even the blind must see it. 
The history of the world presents no picture of two unequal races dwell¬ 
ing together as master and slave in such relations of kindliness and 
strong attachment, the one to the other. To those of us who were reared 
in those times when the institution of slavery existed, there’s many a 
picture evoked by rhemory from our childhood days, bright and gorgeous 
in its hues, and yet the dark faces of this alien race are found in every 
scene. 

They watched over our cradle slumbers, they taught us the first steps 
of childhood, they hushed our wayward cries, and with their own 
peculiar melodies they sung us to our rosy rest on their dusky bosoms. 
They watched with delighted eyes our growing manhood, they rejoiced 
at our marriage festivities. They sat during the long dreary night at 
the bedside of our stricken ones, unwearied in their watching, they 
robed the precious clay for its long, dreamless sleep, and with hearts 
touched with the tenderest emotions and deepest sorrow they followed it 
to the spot where it rests until the resurrection morn. When the bloody 
strife came, and our homes were stripped to furnish solders for the 
tented field, the mistress who with the children were left to conduct the 
affairs of the great plantation, found safety and plenty as the result of 
the industry of slaves and the black man’s fidelity to his owner. 

Much had been done for him physically, intellectually, morally and 
spiritually during the days of his bondage.. He had been elevated from 
a savage of the lowest type up to the dignity of a man. His physical 
proportions had expanded under the generous treatment of his owner, 
and his intelligence and morality had increased by contact with a 
higher race. He had been welcomed to the same sanctuary, to the same 
religious services, to the same baptism and the same communion table 
which conveyed their holy lessons to the master as well as the slave. 

But since he has become a freeman and is invested with all the rights 
and privileges of an American citizen, since after the days of his tutelage 
at our fireside, he goes out into the larger field of duty to prepare him¬ 
self for the higher walks and greater responsibitities of life, new oppor¬ 
tunities of helpfulness to him open themselves to us. 

With reference to this race we may truly say that its history is but 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


35 


begun. That providence which brought so many thousands of them to 
our shores, and which under the civilizing influence of their owners 
have developed them up to their present position of manhood, is but a 
prophecy of what God intends to do with them in the great scheme of 
the world’s redemption. How He designs to employ them in the accom¬ 
plishment of His great purpose, is one of the inscrutable mysteries which 
no human wisdom can discern. Whether they are to remain forever in 
this land living, side by side, with the white people that inhabit it, or 
whether at some future day they are to be transplanted to the land of 
their forefathers, it is not in our power to determine. Whether the 
seven millions of them shall send out missionaries and teachers who shall 
instruct • the dark tribes of Africa and win them to the Master, or 
whether this whole host shall under his guiding hand cross the ocean to 
conquer Africa for our King, we cannot foresee. But we are sure He 
will make these people of such strange history no unimportant factor in 
the liberation of the world from its bondage of sin. Since their freedom, 
such have been our own necessities, and such the calls of our own people 
for spiritual aid, that we have been able to do but little for them. But 
the time has come when we must address ourselves with greater earnest¬ 
ness and diligence to the task that lies before us. These seven millions 
of people ought not, and if we do our duty to them will not, be left to 
their own unaided efforts to make higher attainments, and to be fitted for 
the mission that God has in store for them. "We must stretch forth to 
them a helping hand, and by the multiplied means which God has placed 
in our power improve alike their physical, mental, moral and spiritual 
condition. 

There is another wide field which may justly claim our attention. 
Draw a line from the northwestern corner of Alabama southeast to Co¬ 
lumbus, Ga., then northeast to Washington City, then northwest to 
Wheeling, then southwest to the point of beginning, and this line 
will enclose an area of country notable for the variety and vastness 
of resources. It would include the great body of the Appalachian 
coal field. Throughout it would extend from one end to the other 
the great fields of iron ore of the continent. Along its center runs 
from Pennsylvania to Alabama that great lime-stone valley known 
in its northern part as the Valley of Virginia. This area contains every 
metal and mineral known to human science. I,t holds a sufficient 
supply of hard woods for the western hemisphere. Its water power 
is capable of turning ten times the machinery of the world. On its 
northwestern side lie the great grain fields of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
and the blue grass region of Kentucky and Tennessee. South and 
east of it is the great cotton belt of the continent. Its seaports are Bal¬ 
timore, Norfolk, Wilmington, Charleston and Savannah. An area com¬ 
prising such vast and varied resources is found nowhere else. It is the 
gem which the hand of Omnipotence has laid upon the bosom of the con¬ 
tinent. 


36 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


This vast region is filled with our Baptist people—their churches are 
found in almost every valley—perhaps two hundred and fifty thousand 
of our denomination live within it. But in many parts of it their 
churches are small, inactive, undeveloped, with little opportunity for in¬ 
tellectual culture—their membership having no high ideals of Christian 
life, and no teachers fitted to stimulate them to Christian duty. More 
than three-fourths of all the professing Christians within these limits 
belong to our denomination. 

A change is coming over the face of this country. Capital is being at¬ 
tracted by its magnificent promises. Railroads are penetrating it in 
every direction. Many of its towns and cities are already growing 
rapidly. New centers of manufacturing and commercial interest will be 
established, and the day is not distant when there will be such develop¬ 
ment of its wealth as will astonish the world. To retain the hold we 
have upon this population requires immediate and active exertion upon 
our part. The influences that are giving new life to this vast country, 
bring along with them opinions and religious thoughts that antagonize 
our own, and unless our Baptist churches are so strenghtened by higher 
intellectual and spiritual development as to meet these influences, they 
must go down before them, and this richest part of our heritage be lost 
to us as a denomination, possibly forever. 

What they need, in many places, is better houses of worship, better 
schools for the training of their children, preachers of broader views, 
men of wider outlook and better understanding of the needs of their 
people. Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent among its population 
will in days to come yield ample renumeration even for so large an ex¬ 
penditure. This mine abounding in jewels and precious gems we will 
surely lose if we much longer continue our neglect of its riches and its 
future value to our country. 

Some of our brethren who dwell in realms etherial, and who hardly 
ever descend from their lofty heights so as to come in contact with 
things that are of the earth earthy, have kindly criticized our Board for 
such frequent references to our material developments and the coming 
prosperity of our country. They have never seemed to learn that 
material development is the basis of their civilization. Even our 
churches, the most spiritual and active of all we have, grow up amidst 
these industries that fashion these materials for the uses of man. 

Just as the lily rooting itself in mud and slime develops the life which 
it enfolds into leaves of emerald beauty, and flowers more glorious than 
the vestments of Solomon, so our churches planted in the midst of the 
most active development of material interests, bloom with the beauty 
and are laden with the fruitage that we find nowhere else. We need no 
better illustration of this than can be found in your own State of Ken¬ 
tucky. All the active churches that support the great enterprise of the 
denomination, are to be found in your lovely bluegrass country, and in 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


3 1 


other parts of your State of equal fertility, while the churches of your 
mountain region, where no such development is found, remain for the 
most part in ignorance and inactivity far below the demands of Chris¬ 
tian duty. 

But what the Home Mission Board needs for its work to-day is but a 
fragment of what it will need in the years that are so rapidly coming 
upon us. The history of this country of ours teems with marvelous 
facts, and none among them are more striking than the rapid increase of 
our population, and the more rapid increase of our wealth. 

Little more than two centuries have passed since the first European 
colony established itself upon the shores of the Atlantic. In that time 
this country has not only equaled in the riches of its development the 
power and glory of our mother country, but has exceeded in riches and 
power the Roman Empire, the mightiest that ever existed upon this 
foot-stool of God. American enterprise in these two hundred and fifty 
years has, in the grandeur of its developments, eclipsed all that Rome 
did in the seven hundred and fifty years of her dominance over the 
nations. 

The present census shows that the population of the United States is 
little short of sixty-five millions. Within the last decade fifteen millions 
have been added to the number of its inhabitants. Statisticians tell us 
that during the next decade the average increase will not be less than 
two millions per annum, or twenty millions during ten years. The year 
1900 will find the soil of America sustaining not less than eighty-five 
millions souls. 

Our increase of wealth has been even more marvelous than our in¬ 
crease of population. In 1880, the wealth of the United States had be¬ 
come equal to that of Great Britain, about $44,000,000,000, measuring the 
value of the property owned by each of these two countries. The census 
of 1890 shows that during the last decade the increase of the wealth of 
the United States has been $20,000,000,000, more than forty per cent, 
upon the amount which had been accumulated from the settlement of the 
country to the year 1880. 

A nation with such illimitable resources, and such augmentation of its 
powers, both in numbers and its industrial resources, becomes the most 
striking figure among the peoples of the globe. Its influence upon the 
destiny of the world is simply incalculable. 

If the present ratio of the increase of the population shall continue, in 
thirty years, from 1890, there will be found within our territory one hun¬ 
dred and twenty-five millions of people. These people are to be cared 
f or —their religious wants must be supplied. The twenty millions com¬ 
ing within the next decade will demand the multiplication of our 
churches, the increase of the number of our houses of worship and the 
enlargement of the facilities that look to the supply of our spiritual 
needs. The one hundred and twenty-five millions that in less than the 


38 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


life time of a single generation will come to crowd our shores, will re¬ 
quire for their spiritual enlightenment and religious training, an in¬ 
creased activity and a liberality such as our people have never known. 
With this increase of population comes the greater increase of those 
appliances which multiply the products of human labor, and augment 
the wealth of our land. 

Let us dwell for a moment upon these striking facts. It is evident to 
any one who thinks, that the average worker of to-day is capable of 
accomplishing far more than the average worker of thirty years ago. 
Such have been the marvelous inventions of the age, and so rapidly have 
labor-saving machines been multiplied, that it is short of the truth to 
say that the worker of to-day can do twice as much work as the same 
man could have accomplished thirty years ago. If the same ratio of in¬ 
crease of these appliances shall continue for the next thirty years, what 
a startling fact stares us in the face. 

With our population doubled so as to equal one hundred and twenty- 
five millions, and our machinery so increased as to double the product of 
human industry, we will have a nation capable of producing four times 
the present product of our country. The amount of surplus thousands 
created, over and above the wants of our people, must produce the 
grandest commerce the world ever saw. Discarding all that we now 
send abroad, if the consumption per capita of our people should remain 
the same, we will then have a surplus arising from the industries of the 
land equal to twice our present production. If the consumption per capita 
should be increased fifty per cent., there will then remain an amount 
which must be sent abroad, or perish on our hands, equal to the whole of 
the present products of the industries of our country. 

Imagine, if we can, how many and how great must be the leviathans 
of the type needed to transfer across the ocean to other lands so vast an 
amount. Compared with them, all the fleets that ever swept the seas 
from the day that Tyre from her island home sent her ships through 
Gibraltar into the wide Atlantic, down to the present hour, will be in¬ 
significant. 

The question will arise in thoughtful minds, where will such a vast 
commerce find a market? Not in Western Europe, for their civilization 
and their products are alike our own. As two merchants, or two far¬ 
mers, or two blacksmiths trade little with each other, so two nations of 
similar civilization create little commerce. It is among the nations 
whose products are unlike our own that this market must be found. 
Some of these products will go to supply the wants of the two hundred 
millions of Africa, some of them will go to the islands of the sea, some 
to Mexico, some to South America. But after all, the great bulk of our 
exports must find a market among the five hundred millions of people 
who trade down to the Pacific on the other side. Such will be the need 
of increasing in their land the consumption of the products of our own 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


3d 

that their rivers must be opened, and their highways must be lengthened 
until access can be had to the habitation of the man who lives furthest 
from us on the face of this great globe. This commerce, bounded by no 
zone, and restrained by no obstacle, surmounting every natural difficulty 
and overriding every political restriction will encompass the globe. 

This commerce will bear with it the moral impress of our people. It 
w'ill be charged with the vices of our corrupt civilization, or it will be 
permeated by the influence of the gospel of Christ. According as it 
shall be, either the one or the other, will it prove either a savor of life 
unto life, or of death unto death to the nations. The outlook is over¬ 
whelming. Thirty years and these things shall be—thirty years, and 
the destiny of the world will be in the hands of the American people— 
thirty years, and our commerce will be the vehicle which conveys light, 
life and salvation to the nations or on the hands of those who absorbed 
in greed and gain, will prove the vampires of the world that satiating 
their desires with blood of our humanity. We stand appalled before 
such a picture—we tremble at the responsibility which these years will 
bring to our country and our children. We cover our faces to hide from 
us, if we may, the dreadful responsibility that falls upon us. Thirty years, 
and these things shall be. The men who are to be the actors in this last 
great drama of the world, are the children who now sleep in their cra¬ 
dles, and the boys that gather at our firesides. The moulding influences 
that for the next ten years shall go out from our churches, our Sunday- 
schools and our homes will decide the question whether this great giant 
of our country, whose shadow looms through the mist of coming years 
shall prove an angel of light, scattering peace and joy to the ends of the 
world as the harbinger of our coming King, or whether he shall prove a 
demon whose accursed thirst for gold shall bind the nations in bonds, 
such as never before fettered our humanity, and gorge himself with the 
blood of the slain and the spoils of the captives. 

Such a view of the coming future appeals to every heart with un¬ 
wonted power. Let our churches awake—let every child of God bestir 
himself to so mould the Christian character of our people that this last 
grand empire of the globe shall be the messenger that bears to the na¬ 
tions the tidings of redemption, and the herald that shall announce “the 
kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 

Dr. J. W. Warder, Secretary of Missions in Kentucky, 
spoke, saying that he hoped that the stirring address of Dr. 
Tichenor would increase our contributions. 


40 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


W. Pope Yeaman, S. T. D. of Missouri, discussed 

AMERICA AS A FACTOR IN MISSION WORK. 

(An ex tempore address, reproduced by request of the Committee.) 

Mr. Chairman: 

It has been a question with me how to compress the discussion of this 
vast field of thought within the limits authoritatively prescribed. But my 
distinguished friend, Dr. Tichenor, has relieved me of this perplexity 
by coming over on the ground surveyed and bounded to me, and work¬ 
ing it with his silver-coated and gold-mounted plow. I shall, therefore, 
confine myself to such corners as could not be reached by his powerful 
traction engine. 

America as a Factor in Mission Work! What are we to understand 
by America? Do we mean the Western half of the globe? If so, we 
may stand appalled by the immensity of the field. A vast bi-continent 
territory; a multitudinous population of diversity of tongues and uncon¬ 
genial social institutions. So we mean the North American Continent? 
Then we may well cry: Who is sufficient for these things? We look to 
the Canadas, and behold! A mixed population with every shade of be¬ 
lief and unbelief. Do we turn our eyes to the Republic of Mexico? 
There we see crystalized ignorance and traditional-religious corruption. 
Shall we journey to our own Alaska to encounter avarice, savagery, and 
brutish humanity? What a field these outlying wastes for sacrificing 
missionary enterprise. But are we to limit our observations to the 
States and Territories of this great North American Republic? This 
seem quite a limitation, yet how limitless the field! What opportuni¬ 
ties; what obstacles! What prosperity; what hindrances! What fear¬ 
ful obligations, what indifference! 

But shall we of these United States call ourselves America? Are 
we Americans more than the Canadians ? Have not the de¬ 
scendants of the Aztecs and the surviving posterity of the Aborigi¬ 
nal Indian better title to the designation American than have we, 
the offspring of staid Puritans and chivalric cavalier? The United 
States—a social, political, and religious phenomenon. Our growth a 
surprise, our institutions a marvel, and our prowess the dread of older 
civilizations. 

Contemporaneous with America’s celebration of the four hundredth 
year of Columbus’ discovery, is the honoring of the Centennial of Or¬ 
ganized Modern Christian Missions. Are not these incidents and coin¬ 
cidents in the history of progress suggestive of the orderings of Divine 
Providence in things pertaining to the Kingdom of Christ? Can we in¬ 
telligently contemplate the Gospel apart from the history of progress? 
The sublime pathos of the Gospel is its proposition to uplift humanity 
from its self-imposed degradation through human instrumentality. The 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


41 


Gospel contemplates nothing- short of the redemption and reclamation 
of the earth to the glory of God, and this through the agency of the 
Church of Christ. 

The field of missionary operations is the world, God is the power, 
Christ the inspiration, and man the worker. This enterprise startled 
angels and transformed the hearts of men. God loves the world without 
regard to races or nationalities. In man’s relation to law, and in the meth¬ 
ods of redemption from its course, “there is no difference—there is neither 
Jew nor Greek,” Barbarian or Sythian, bond or free. Nevertheless, if 
we trace the designs of God in the handwriting of Providence we find 
the Jew first, then the Gentile. So we find also the geographical dis¬ 
tribution, first the East and then the West. Westward is the course of 
empire. Good Bishop Berkely prophecied further than he knew. The 
forces of progress are ever Westward. In a single century we see the 
movement of power from the East to the West of our empire Republic. 

The settlement of the North American Continent by Christian people 
may be fairly interpreted a providential arrangement for the more sure 
and rapid enlightenment of the nations of the earth. The imperfect 
civilizations of the Old World had become so far corrupted and so far 
removed from the simplicity of the Gospel that a new people, new in¬ 
stitutions, fresh inspirations—a “New World” was needed for the pur¬ 
pose of holding the truth, and giving it in its purity to the benighted 
regions of the “Old World.” 

It is a truth of man’s nature that superiority must dominate inferior¬ 
ity. In the relations of human life the weak are dependent upon the 
strong. It is furthermore true that, for the superior races of man, po¬ 
litical freedom is necessary to the largest civil progress and highest 
Christian attainment. There can be no true development of a race 
innately progressive where there is not freedom of thought and con¬ 
science—the mind must not be held insubordinate subjection to civil or 
ecclesiastical autocracy or monarchy. Religious liberty, guaranteed by 
civil institutions, is necessary to that freedom of conscience upon which 
depends Christian development. Religious freedom — a benediction 
from Baptists to America—makes it the world’s greatest Christian land. 
American institutions educate the American heart to the largest hu¬ 
manity. Out of this, under the ministrations of the Holy Spirit, comes 
the largest spirit of Missions. 

The blessings which Providence has so munificently bestowed upon 
America in making of it the land and home of the free; in lavishing 
upon her people phenomenal wealth, as the product of seemingly inex¬ 
haustible natural resources, and in defending her against foreign foes, 
give unto her wonderful opportunities and power for blessing mankind. 

These blessings to a people come not without corresponding obliga¬ 
tions and responsibilities. The measure of our obligation is the degree 
of our blessings from the hands of the God to whom we are responsible. 


42 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


May we not begin to estimate the magnitude of America as a factor 
in Mission work. Here we are—forty-four free Republics held in Union 
by common consent of a free and enlightened citizenship. It is con¬ 
ceded by staticians of other civilizations that we are the most prosper¬ 
ous and the wealthiest people on earth. Here are unnumbered churches, 
Christian colleges, tens of thousands of ministers of the Gospel, and 
millions of Christian communicants. What does all this mean? Why 
this wonderful growth into greatness in so short a while? What are we 
here for? Let me ask you, fellow-Christians, is our mission no more 
than personal aggrandizement and national boasting? Why our fertile 
soils, our diversified product, our abounding mines of precious metals. 
Are these things ours, or are they God’s? Are we fee simple owners, or 
tenants and stewards? 

Does not the condition and history of American people bring us into 
peculiar relation to other peoples? Have we not God-committed mes¬ 
sages for those less favored than we? That Frenchman’s gift standing 
in New York harbor, symbolizing our own America as Liberty enlight¬ 
ening the world, is politically significant. But, may we not learn an¬ 
other lesson from that radiant statue, Beams there not a light upon far- 
off peoples from the thousands of movements decking our fair land in 
honor of and subservient to the Light of the World? Ah! friends and 
brethren, believe it! Believe it! America’s relation to the peoples of 
the earth make of her the most important factor in the missionary work 
of the world! 

WHAT, THEN, IS OUR DUTY? 

First—Strengthen the things that remain: bring all our forces into 
harmony with the spirit and purpose of Christ’s Kingdom. Is the reli¬ 
gion of Jesus Christ merely a plan—a scheme for individual salvation 
for the individual’s sake? If the Gospel purpose be limited, as we have 
heard here, and that limited purpose backed by Infinite energy, then 
we may be assured, do as we may, that purpose shall be accomplished. 
Is your missionary conviction and zeal only an evidence of your conver¬ 
sion? Well, I have nothing to do with divine decrees. I have not been 
admitted to the secret councils of the Trinity. One thing I believe— 
man is self-ruined. Yet another-thing I believe—Christ Jesus came into 
the world to seek and to save the lost. I know He said, in touching 
words of prayer to the Father, “As Thou didst send me into the world, 
even so have I also sent them into the world.” Here is the mission of 
the church to seek and to save the lost. Holding forth the word life 
is the high calling and solemn trust of the people of God. Ye are the 
light of the world, the salt of the earth. I cannot see the Church of 
Christ in any other light than that which is beaming from the Cross 
Missions and Christianity are to my mind synonomous terms. Conver¬ 
sion in Christ is to bring you and me, my brother, into sympathy with 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


43 


Christ’s purpose and work to save the world. We ought not—we cannot 
live to ourselves. If life is shut in to individualism then it is a blunder, 
and living is a stupendous humbug. To free man from the narrowness 
of selfness, Christ died. He died that they which live should not hence¬ 
forth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose 
again. Is the Church an institution in cold separateness from the 
world, or is it not rather an inspiration in sympathizing touch with lost 
humanity? The Church ought to uplift itself from institutionalism into 
the inspiring atmosphere of that love that outstretches bleeding hands 
to embrace a world. The time has come for the Church to understand 
and appreciate its place in the redemptive economy of the Gospel, and 
zealously conserve its spritual forces. If the Church be not the incarna¬ 
tion of the Spirit of Christ, then it is no more than a human organiza¬ 
tion. If it be the body of Christ then its mission is identical with His 
mission. It cannot afford to fritter away its strength in vain philoso¬ 
phies, or uncertain speculation, or hollow ceremonies. It must not de¬ 
bilitate itself by a mechanical use of forms—responsive and concert 
readings prescribed by and furnished at “headquarters.” Such intru¬ 
sions upon the simplicity of spiritual worship are ominous. Let us be 
careful to watch tendencies. They are more influential in Church as 
well as in State than open and violent revolutions. We need not so 
much dread “Higher Criticism” or “Advanced (?) Thought,” or “Scien- 
rific Methods,” as the tendency to formalism and the craze for multitu¬ 
dinous organizations outside of the Church. What we need is a simple, 
robust faith that courts conflict with the powers of darkness and propo¬ 
ses assault upon the frowning ramparts of sin and Satan. 

Brethren, the Word is the sword of the Spirit. Let us preach the 
Word—it is spirit and life. If our churches would be missionary in the 
truest and best sense they must hold fast the form of sacred words and 
earnestly contend for the faith delivered once for all to the Saints. The 
business of the Church is the conversion of the world. It has no busi¬ 
ness with any other business. But this mission implies and compre¬ 
hends more than striving for numbers. • • 

The truth of the matter is, the law of our life is found in social envi¬ 
ronment, and there is no way to fulfill the law but to lovingly serve our 
fellow mortals, and this is exactly what the Church is for. If any one 
of you were cast off alone upon a lonely island of the seas, you could 
worship God; you could adore Him; you could commune with him; but 
you could not serve Him. There would be no field. The relation we 
sustain to others is the ground and explanation of moral obligation. We 
cannot negatively answer the question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” 

We must go a step further and learn the relation of the material to 
the spiritual—the temporal to the eternal. There seems too much of a 
disposition to draw a line of separation between the sacred and the secu¬ 
lar. For the purposes of human speech it is sometimes convenient to 


44 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


make a distinction when there is not a difference, but in point of truth 
there is no differenc between religion and business. We are taught: 
Whatsoever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all things in the name 
of Christ. They who tell us, with a knowing shrug of the shoulder, 
and a wise blink of the eye, that “business is business and religion is re¬ 
ligion,” have more of business than of religion. Our employments 
ought to be a factor of our religion. 

Not until we shall have learned that God’s reign is a universal unity, 
and that the same law operates through the diverse ramification of all 
things, can we know that life, with its capabilities and opportunities, is 
subservient to the honor of the maker and owner of all things. The 
world of matter is as much a part of God’s domain as the world of spirit; 
and he has not divorced the one from the other. He lays tribute upon the 
carnal for the honor and triumph of the spiritual. Man’s dominion over 
the works of God in the earth is to the end that man shall act as a serv¬ 
ant in honoring the Creator in the use of material environment. Then, 
whether we dig or build, sow or reap, buy or sell, all must be done in 
the line of seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. 

There is a mighty material agency which, in this connection, I must 
not fail to mention—I mean the printing press. Christianity was wise 
to lay holy hands on this almost marvelous invention. There is not 
so potent an engine in its factors of progress as the press. We live in 
the printing-reading age. Christian progress would be next to impossi¬ 
ble without this wonderful auxiliary. Mission work would be a com¬ 
parative failure were it not for printing. The time was when oratory 
educated thought and directed the movements of men. Now it is the 
press. This engine has come to stay. If it were well to banish it, it 
could not be done. If the Church fail to make most of the press it fails 
to do its utmost for the spread of divine truth. It is true that the press 
is to an extent used against Christianity, but this is only another reason 
why the Church of Christ should use all diligence in commanding this 
miracle of science and art in the interests of truth. 

It is true, and must ever be true, that the preached Word is the prime 
instrumentality for enlisting the hearts of men in the service of Christ. 
But, for the enlargement of Christian intelligence, and the invigoration 
of the spirit of progress, the press is indispensable. 

Second—Cultivate the waste land of your own field. How shall we do 
our duty to the regions beyond if we do not bring our own strength up 
to maximum possibilities? He who tills the soil has not much to sell to 
the exporter unless he utilizes every available resource. Are we giv 
ing our attention to home field. Foreign Missions are deservedly pop¬ 
ular. But may not a misguided enthusiasm for Foreign Missions serve 
to defeat the end at which we aim by overlooking the duty of developing 
home resources? Let us not give less to the foreign field, but more to 
the home field. 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


45 


Have we need of enthusiasm and enlarged interest in Home Missions? 
Have we destitution? Let us see? The population of our States and 
Territories is, in round numbers, sixty-five millions. We are a religious 
people, but are we a Christian people. There is much religion in the 
world. Mohammedans have it. Buddhists have it. Confucians have it. 
What we want is not nominal Christianity, but Christianity. What of 
our vast population? Have we more than seven million communicants 
in Evangelical Churches? Suppose we put the number at ten million, 
then we have less than one-sixth of our population who can be reckoned 
Christian. What of the five-sixths and more? Suppose we narrow the 
estimate down to our own denominational standard of truth. Have we 
all told more than three million communicants in this country of Chris¬ 
tian name? This puts nineteen-twentieths of our population in the 
dark. With legitimate limitations, we may say that this is a heathen 
land. If we extend the term America over Mexico and Cuba the dark¬ 
ness intensifies. 

But what further of our population? Here we have a large element of 
foreign birth and children of foreign-born parents. Almost every language 
on earth is spoken in the United States. Every phase of social life, every 
aspect of crime and every shade of belief and unbelief is represented by this 
population. Speaking from the promptings of the American spirit, and at 
the suggestion of American institutions, these people are Americans. But 
how shall eight million Germans, who are, because of their devotion to 
the Fatherland, more German than American? How shall we mold into 
homogenity our heterogeneous mass of Germans, Irish, French, Norwe¬ 
gian, Portuguese, Italian, Negro, and Indian, and what not, if it be not 
by the unifying power of the Gospel. Shall not we expect and hope for 
the answer to our Savior’s prayer that there “may be one.” What a 
work? How grand the proposition! How difficult the undertaking! 
But is not the grandeur measured by the difficulty? Is it not a fact 
that, notwithstanding our national prosperity and glory, and our more 
than a century of age, that we are yet, as a people, in the formative 
stage of our being? What shall be our crystalized character? Are we 
not to have a distinguishing characteristic? Shall it be wealth, or power, 
or prowess, or learning, or sumptuous luxury and effeminateness? Or 
shall it be Godliness? It is righteousness that exalteth a nation. This 
is not namby-pambyism; this is not sickly sentimentalism; this is not 
goody-goodism; it is philosophy—it is common sense. If the Lord be 
God, then His will must be the only true philosophy of life. Say not 
that the Word of God has nothing to do with social conditions, nor 
social conditions with the Word of God. God’s will is a law from 
Heaven for life on earth. 

The conversion and Christian development of our foreign population 
will become the mightiest force for the Christianization of the nations 
represented there. Excellent Foreign Mission work will be to convert 


46 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


our own foreigners. In proportion to the increase of America’s foreign 
population, will be the influence of America upon the conditions of life 
in other lands. What shall that influence be? It remains for American 
Christians to answer the question. The progress of Christianity in this 
country clearly indicates that Baptists are a leading factor in morally 
revolutionizing the world. You see your calling, brethren. 

In the work of home evangelization we are to intelligently recognize 
the suggestions of social conditions and govern ourselves by the irre¬ 
vocable laws of God as written in the nature of things. The history of 
the Indian for ages proves that his place and mission in the world is not 
that of the Anglo-Saxon. Shall we ask of God: Why? Nay, verily! 
This is none of our business. Yet, the Indian has mind—he has a soul; 
and the best Indian is not the dead Indian. I shall not endeavor to 
paint a picture of the white man’s cruelty to the red man. The colors 
would be so dark that there could be no light upon the shadings. This 
much we all know, that as Christians we are debtors to all men, and the 
Indian is man, and in him can be developed many qualities of moral 
good. Who so indebted to the Indian as the white man? Shall we 
continue to drive the Indian from the earth? No! No! Rather let us 
help him to inherit the earth, and all the blessings of the eternal life. 
Let us, with the Word of Life wipe the Indian’s blood from our skirts 
and offer unto him newness of life. He is God’s mind-creature. 

We have among us seven million Negroes. What of this fact? It is 
a dark fact; can we throw light upon it? Here they are invested with 
civil rights—a political anomaly. Unfortunately they are here to stay 
with a race superior in numbers and natural gifts. The superior race 
must always dominate the inferior. This can’t be helped! If there are 
any “fixed laws” this is one of them. We all know it, whether we admit 
it or not. Yet there is no “race problem” for statesmen or religionists 
to solve. The negro is a citizen. It is his duty to be a good citizen. It 
is the duty of the white man to help him become just as good a citizen 
as it is possible for him to be. The negro is instinctively religious—his 
religion is impulsive and physically demonstrative. He needs the 
Christian religion to enlighten him as to the significance of life and its 
relations and duties. To help him to be a good citizen and an informed* 
Christian it is the duty of the white man—this and nothing more, cer¬ 
tainly nothing less. We owe him nothing that we do not owe others 
He is not the “nation’s ward,” he is by law a part of the nation—if we 
have any nation. All we have to do with the supposed “problem” is to 
let it alone, and see that the negro is taught to behave himself rightly, 
and make him do so when necessary, just as we white folks. 

There is no occasion for any political or sectional prejudices about the 
negro All restrictions by secular or religious assemblies about 
‘Southern Outrages” are but the expressions of sectional dislike under 
the guise of Christian humanity. Southern society has the right to 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


47 


protect defenseless purity by such means as the circumstances of the 
case seem to demand. And this right is as sacred in Alabama as it is in 
Nebraska or Indiana. Lynch law is, as a rule, wrong. Judge Lynch’s 
court should be of rare resort, and it is. Society creates all courts, and 
society must be the judge of jurisdiction in special cases where just 
popular indignation demands summary and exemplary retribution to un¬ 
endurable social outrages. Any noble people will protect their wives 
and daughters against white or black demons. Let us seek to give all 
classes and races that Christian education and Christian thought and 
Christian spirit that shall leave Judge Lynch without an occupation and 
retire him from his rugged bench. The Southern white Christian is 
giving the negro the gospel, only give it more freely and lovingly. This 
we must do. We must do it sincerely, prayerfully and thoughtfully, and 
leave all questions of social conditions to settle themselves in harmony 
with the laws of nature physiologically written. The negro, like any 
other citizen, must fight the battle of life according to the suggestions 
and requirements of environment. If he can bring himself to the front, 
let him come, but don’t try to tear down nature’s walls to get him there. 

We have great occasion to thank God for the generous efforts made by 
Baptists and others for the Christian education of the negro and the negro 
ministry. Let the work go on! Let it go forward mightily, but away 
with that maudlin sentiment that prates of social equality. No intelli¬ 
gent white man or woman wants or believes in it. Those who preach 
it don’t nor won’t practice it. The informed negro don’t demand it or 
expect it. There is no harm in the color line so that it be drawn at its 
right place and proper time. It will be drawn. No sentiment, no statute 
can prevent it. 

Where shall we expend our energies in Home Mission work? Every¬ 
where. But especially in our cities. I am a countryman. The plow 
and the harrow, the mower and the rake make my bread, but I try to 
give some attention to the nature and demands of mission fields. I am 
not indifferent to the wants of our rural districts. My tastes and my 
sympathies are with the ruralist. But I realize the fact that must rec¬ 
ognize, that, the progress of our country has greatly changed the fields 
and methods of missionary work. There are destitute fields in the rural 
districts, but the number and extent of such fields are small compared 
with even the recent part. Our country churches have greatly multi¬ 
plied and increased in efficiency. Yet there are some localities in each 
of the States where the people are without church privileges and where 
the living ministry is much needed to win souls to Christ, and minister 
comfort and consolation and growth to the scattered and neglected saints. 
But it is not as once it was, when our fathers preached in private resi¬ 
dences, log school houses and barns beneath the shading boughs of forest 
monarchs. The missionary is no longer the “lone horseman” with saddle 
pockets, carrying the Word of God in one side and a twist of “legal 


48 


CENTENNIAL, CELEBRATION 


tender” in the other, with perhaps a change of linen. Now the iron 
horse and the palace car carry the missionary within convenient distance 
of almost every settlement. The white country church with its adjacent 
village of the dead is now the beauty of our wide extended land. The 
remaining uncultivated fields are receiving a fair ratio of attention at 
the hands of our boards. 

The centers of population—towns and cities are of increasing interest 
to the sociologist, the publicist and the enterprising Christian. The 
tendency of our population is to these centers. They are now the seats 
of enterprise, the depositories of wealth, the homes of fashion, and the 
hotbeds of iniquity. Bless God, they are also the abodes of much of the 
force and beauty and enterprise of Christianity. The magnificence of 
some of our metropolitan churches is beautifully exemplary. It remains 
true, ly)wever, that our church sittings in cities is not equal to what 
ought to be the church-going habit. Why is this so? It is simply be¬ 
cause the extent of religion does not demand more extensive church 
facilities. The demand ought to be increased. This can be done only 
by missionary effort. 

The influence of centers of population upon the thought, sentiment, 
tastes, and customs of the rural districts is so great that it demands the 
careful thought on the part of all Christian workers. The increased 
methods of rapid transit, the quick communication of news, and the gen¬ 
eral circulation of the metropolitan daily newspaper are bring¬ 
ing the country more and more under the domination of the town. Our 
swains and lasses catch the contagion of city dudes and belles, and learn 
to attitudinize and pose by looking at advertisement wood cuts and 
fashion plates. This in itself may be innocent and harmless, but it 
proves and illustrates the potency of city influence. Why we country 
folk, we horny-handed sons of toil, boast of our political mastery, and 
then when the primaries are all over we sulk because we find ourselves 
the dupes and tools of hoodlums and fixers. 

Now it is true that much that is good every way goes forth from the 
city to impress and improve the country—yet there goes with it all much 
devilment. The prize fight, the horse race, the lottery, the gambling 
spirit, the halls of dancing, and the houses of sinful pleasure. We need 
strong men in our cities, men of humane hearts and divine inspiration, 
to dam up the dark streams of damnation. 

It’s a pity, and more is the pity that it’s a pity, that many, very many 
of the best and most hopeful of our young men of the country are yearly 
flocking to our cities, caused by the hope of fortune and desire for clean 
easy living. City Christians should use all diligence to protect, promote^ 
and save the sons of the soil. 

When we view the state of religion in our own America, in the ratio 
of its converts to the whole population, the nature and progress of our 
social institutions, the relation that our country, as the home of a world- 


49 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 

conquering- civilization, sustains to other countries, we are, or ought to 
be, at once convinced that American Home Missions is the key-stone in 
the arch of the world’s evangelization. 

Third—All that I have endeavored to set forth in this hasty and cur¬ 
sory discussion serves to emphacize and magnify the importance of 
America as a factor in Foreign Mission work. When we send the Gos¬ 
pel in the dark places at home we are paving the way to send it more 
into “darkest Africa,” superstitious China, oppressed India, ignorant 
Italy, cursed Cuba, and degraded Mexico. Yet, shall we wait for our 
fullest fruition to home work before we hearken the cry, “Come over 
and help us.” Nay, we have not done so, nor should we. Shall one 
wait until his own enterprises have filled the measure of his expecta¬ 
tions before he feeds the hungry poor? Never! That were sinful. 

America’s Christians have a sublime mission with sublimer prospects. 
It is now our privilege and opportunity to fling back glorious light into 
the benighted East, whence came the light that enlightened us. Our 
civil institutions, our popular government, our zealous care of individual 
rights, under the fostering care and guidance of Divine truth, are the 
thorns in the crowns of emperors, the dynamite beneath the thrones of 
tyrants, and the hope of the oppressed and the downtrodden of less 
favored lands. 

Fair America! Proud America!! Free America!!! May Christian 
truth and the spirit of the Christ—the simplicity of the Gospel, and 
practical Godliness be the palladium of the blood-bought and God-given 
liberty, the inspiration to thy life, the assurance of thy perpetuity, and 
thy benedictions to far-off peoples. 

Prof. H. H. Harris emphasized the thought that the race 
problem would solve itself if let alone. 

Rev. W. C. Grace, of Tennessee, said that in the mountain 
region of the Southern Baptist Convention there are more 
Baptists to the square mile than in any other section. 

Dr. Ellis called attention to the fact that Christianity is not 
dependent upon the favor of governments, because it spread 
more rapidly than at any other time under the tyranny of 
Rome during the first two centuries. Let us not count too 
much on social institutions. What is the actual influence of 
free America on Africa? She is damning it with rum. En¬ 
gland with her opium and America with her rum join hands 
at the altar of mammon. 

A word as to formalism. There are two conceptions of 
worship; one of expression, the other of impression. Gothic? 


50 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


piles, decorations, clouds of incense are designed to impress 
and overawe the worshiper. The whole conception of Bap¬ 
tist worship gathers about the pulpit and not the altar. Our 
people are known by their adherence to the Book, not by the 
cut of a coat. 

Rev. J. M. Weaver explained his views of the aim and 
nature of missionary work. 

Dr. Ryland dismissed the audience. 

MONDAY AFTERNOON. 

Rev. B. D. Gray, of Mississippi, spoke upon 

METHODS IN MISSIONS. 

What suits one field will not suit another. Paul tried different meth¬ 
ods, according to his surroundings. 

Method will be largely determined by the aim in view. * With Protes¬ 
tants who believe in a general study of the Scriptures, the translation 
and circulation of the Bible is emphasized. The methods of the China 
Inland Mission, who believe in preaching the Gospel as a witness to the 
nations, must be different from those of a mission that aims at the 
founding and indoctrinating of churches. 

Well, what ought to be the aim? I take it that Christ’s Commission 
gives it clearly. It is broad enough in its scope and plain enough in its 
substance. 

The mission of the twelve is set aside, on the ground that the later 
and more comprehensive excludes the early and more limited commis¬ 
sion. Going without support is expressly abrogated by Christ. His 
disciples were to take money and means of defense. But even in the 
earlier commission it is said that the laborer is worthy of his hire. 
Paul maintains the doctrine of his right to a support from the churches, 
while for the sake of expediency he did not demand it. Men are now 
converting a matter of policy into a matter of principle. 

What is the aim of missions? It is both itinerant and permanent. 
The Commission has in it nothing short of permanent, self-supporting, 
self-propagating churches. The missionary journeys of Paul show his 
solicitude to maintain and strengthen the churches which had been 
brought together through his labors. 

What is the best method for attaining the grand aim before us? Our 
methods certainly ought to be pliable. There ought to be as much dif¬ 
ference in methods abroad as at home, as much as between the methods 
of Walnut-street church and those of a country church in the mountains. 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


51 


We are to evangelize the World. How? By preaching; but even 
this is a means and not an end. We must have more preachers on the 
field. A certain Moravian church has a missionary for every twenty- 
two members. 

Along with preaching there must be education. In some cases educa¬ 
tion must go before missionary activity; in others it ought to follow. 
Of course there is danger of going to an extreme. 

We need more money for this work. Twenty-five thousand Moravians 
give more than Southern Baptists to this cause. 

[Dr. Gray reviewed briefly three pamphlets by former missionaries of 
our Board, and showed how in each pamphlet the principle for which it 
contended was violated.] 

Dr. Broadus doesn’t get discouraged about differences of opinion 
among Baptists. Where there are five Baptists there are usually five 
opinions. 

We have romantic ideas as to missionaries, and set them on a high 
pedestal. But, after all, they are just men. They may be unfit for mis¬ 
sion work, or may lose their health. In every great commercial enter¬ 
prise there are failures, and so it must be in missionary operations. 


MONDAY NIGHT. 

Prayer was offered by W. H. Felix, D. D., of Lexington, 
Kentucky. 

Dr. J. B. Hawthorne, of Atlanta, Ga., spoke on 

THE BEGINNING OF MODERN MISSIONS. 

Man is a commemorative being. He remembers; he cherishes the 
recollection of events in his history, and that of his family, and nation, 
and race, which were unusually significant, instructive, or pleasing. 

When Joshua, Israel’s great military leader, had completed his work 
of conquering the idolatrous tribes of Canaan, and of putting the Lord’s 
people into possession of that land of promise, knowing that he must 
soon die, he summoned the Israelites before him and delivered to them 
his valedictory message. He reviewed their history, and showed how 
God had guided and blessed them and fulfilled the promise he had 
made centuries before to their fathers. He warned them of the sin and 
peril of idolatry, and exhorted them to continue in the worship of the 
Lord God, who had delivered them from bondage and brought them 
into that land of plenty and beauty. 

With one voice they responded, declaring that they would serve the 
Lord, and Him only, Then Joshua took a great stone and set it up un- 


52 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


der an oak, which stood near the sanctuary, and said, “Behold, this stone 
shall be a witness unto us, for it hath heard all the words of the Lord 
which He spake unto us ; it shall, therefore, be a witness unto you lest 
ye deny your God.” That was a memorial stone. It was set there to re¬ 
mind them of a great event in their history—the recording of a solemn 
pledge to cleave to the true and living God. 

Years before that, when they crossed the Jordan, they erected at the 
place of their crossing a heap of stones to commemorate the great mira¬ 
cle of the dividing of the waters. 

Memorial pillars, memorial altars, memorial temples, memorial 
feasts, and memorial days, make a very conspicuous feature of the his¬ 
tory of the human race. 

How sublime and sacred are some of these institutions! The Sabbath 
day pointed back to the completion of God’s creative work, the Lord’s 
Supper to the atoning death of the world’s Redeemer, and Baptism to 
His burial and triumphant resurrection. 

In the institution of these imperishable ordinances, the Lord God sig¬ 
nifies his approval of that universal instinct among men, to commemo¬ 
rate great deeds, great events, and great epochs. 

The utility of memorial observances and institutions in generating, 
strengthening, and preserving virtuous and noble sentiments and aspi¬ 
rations, cannot be doubted. 

At the capitol of our Republic stands the tallest monument ever reared 
by human hands to human greatness. Cui bonof It stands there to re¬ 
mind us of those illustrious deeds and virtues which made our Washing¬ 
ton “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his country¬ 
men.” It stands there overlooking every other monument, to tell us 
that there is one name in American history above every other name, 
one example of unselfish devotion to country above every other exam¬ 
ple, one star in our nation’s galaxy which shines with a purer, serener, 
and steadier radiance than any other star. Let us commiserate the stu¬ 
pidity which fails to recognize and appreciate the wisdom of our people 
in rearing that monument. 

On the 4th day of July, 1770, the old Liberty Bell rang out to the 
world the glorious tidings that the American Colonies, through their 
chosen representatives, had adopted the Declaration of Independence, 
thereby severing their connection forever with the despotic government 
of the mother country. 

Who will deny that the annual celebration of that birthday of Ameri¬ 
can freedom, has done much to keep alive the spirit of liberty and pa¬ 
triotism in the breasts of the American people? 

I am sure that I shall be guilty of no extravagance of speech when I 
say, that the great Baptist brotherhood of this and of other continents, 
in celebrating the Centennial of Modern Missions, commemorate an 
event of incomparably greater magnitude than the birth of a nation. 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


53 


The beginning of Modern Missions was the beginning of a type of a 
moral chivalry, in comparison with which the heroism displayed on 
earth’s bloody battlefields is unworthy of mention. The beginning of 
Modern Missions was the beginning of a sacred enterprise that has done 
more for the betterment of the world’s condition than all the discoveries 
of science, the wisdom of statecraft, or the triumphs of war. 

I trust that I give expression to no unworthy sentiment when I say, 
that my joy to-day rises into ecstasy over the honor which is mine, in 
having membership in that denomination of Christians to which be¬ 
longs the great glory of beginning Modern Missions. 

If it be lawful and commendable in Lutherans to remind' the world of 
what God wrought through the faith and courage of Martin Luther; if 
Presbyterians may be excused for pointing us to the priceless products 
of the masterful mind of John Calvin; and if Methodists are justly 
proud of the zeal and sanctity and wisdom of John Wesley, I am sure 
that Baptists need not be ashamed of William Carey, that dauntless 
Christian hero,that prodigy of intellect, energy, and grace, who conceived 
and planned and put into successful operation, the incomparable enter¬ 
prise of Modern Missions. It is unquestionably and elemental principal 
in the economy of grace, to choose things that are weak and lowly for 
the accomplishment of the loftiest purposes. 

The instruments which God chooses for the sublimest and most diffi¬ 
cult undertakings, are often found in seemingly unfavorable places, and 
have but little value in the eyes of the world. 

John the Baptist was a denizen of the desert, that wild, rugged, wil¬ 
derness country lying immediately West of the Jordan. 

When he began to preach, in the minds of the pharisees—the religious 
aristocracy—the great high-church party of Judea—he was only “a 
reed shaken by the wind”—a little feeble fluttering thing in the air, 
that would soon exhaust itself and disappear. Obscure in his origin, a 
dweller in the desert, untaught by the doctors of the law, what claims 
had he as a public teacher of men? Such was the instrument which in¬ 
finite wisdom chose to awake a long slumbering nation, and make ready 
a people for the Lord. And so grandly did he accomplish his mission 
that Christ has put him on the loftiest pinnacle of human greatness. 
For a movement of no less magnitude, and certainly not less difficult and 
perilous, God chose William Carey, “the consecrated cobbler.” Carey 
began to preach at the age of eighteen, and while he was an apprentice 
in a shoemaker’s shop. He asked no one to give him an education. He 
determined that, with God’s help, he would educate himself. He entered 
no college. He made a college of his cobbler’s bench. There, “with 
borrowed grammars and lexicons, and second-hand books bought at the 
cost of bread,” he mastered Latin and Greek and Hebrew. There he 
studied natural science, and metaphysics, and enriched his mind with 
the treasures of the best classic literature. 


54 


Centennial Celebration 


When the boy, Corregio, stood before the canvas on which Raphael 
had painted one of his immortal pictures, exclaiming, “I, too, am a 
painter!” he was not more conscious of the possibilities of his life than 
Carey was as he toiled in the lowly vocation of a village cobbler, that 
God had laid his ordaining hand upon him, and set him apart for some 
great scheme that would illumine and enrich the world. 

If the inspiration which Corregio caught from Raphael’s picture, car¬ 
ried him through all his tedious initial studies, blended his colors, 
guided his pencil, and shown upon his canvas until he became the peer 
of Raphael, we need not wonder that under an infinitely deeper, mightier 
and diviner inspiration, William Carey mastered all the difficulties that 
environed his young life, developed his mind, filled it with the richest 
treasures of learning, and thoroughly equipped himself for the magnifi¬ 
cent work to which he was called, and for the splendid triumphs which 
rewarded his labors of love. 

While he preached the unsearchable riches of Christ fervently and 
faithfully to the people of his own neighborhood and country from the 
day of his conversion, his Christian sympathies went out towards the 
benighted and neglected “regions beyond.” He believed that Christ 
“died not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.” Every 
nation was brought nigh to him by the blood of Jesus, and every lan¬ 
guage to him was but the medium through which he longed to tell the 
story of redeemed love.' He did not believe that the marching orders 
which the Captain of salvation had given to His soldiers had even been 
revoked or suspended. Pilled with the inspiration of a deep conviction, 
and luminous with the white heat of a great and holy purpose, he dili¬ 
gently prepared himself to smite with paralysis and death, if possible, 
the opposition of ministers and churches to any immediate effort at 
evangelizing the pagan nations. 

When he had reached his thirty-first year, having honestly and pray¬ 
erfully investigated the great subject, absolutely confident of the cor¬ 
rectness of his position, he went before the Nottingham Association, to 
which he had been sent as a messenger by his church, and began the 
contest by propounding as a subject for discussion the following ques¬ 
tion: “Is not the command given to the Apostles to teach all nations 
binding on all ministers to the end of the world, seeing that the accom¬ 
panying promise is to be with them always, even unto the end of the 
world?” Nothing more is needed to prove that Carey had absolutely no 
support, or sympathy, in the beginning of his movement than the quick 
and caustic rebuke which was administered to him by his own spiritual 
father, the learned, the good, the great Dr. Ryland, who, with an air of 
impatience and indignation, replied, “You are a miserable enthusiast 
for asking such a question.” 

Think of such an expression as coming from the lips of a learned 
leader of English Baptists, no longer than a hundred years ago. The 


Of modern missions. 


55 


veriest Hardshell in the mountains of East Tennessee, would not go fur¬ 
ther than that. No reader of ecclesiastical history can doubt that 
our “Hardshell” brethren have one valid reason for calling themselves 
“Primitive” Baptists. They certainly had “a local habitation and a 
name” as far back as a century ago. Baptists at that period, like all 
other denominations of Christians, were not only doing nothing to give 
the Gospel to the heathen world, but were stubbornly opposed to any 
effort in that direction. 

But God be thanked, that through the mighty power of his transform¬ 
ing grace, the Hardshells became soft, and the very people who had so 
sternly opposed the sending of the Gospel to the perishing pagans, be¬ 
came the pioneers, the victorious leaders, in the battles of the Cross on 
pagan soil. 

The rebuke which Carey received did not baffle him, nor move him a 
hair’s breadth from the line of his holy purpose. Modestly, meekly, but 
with a determination “fixed as fate,” he unfurled his missionary banner, 
and in a voice whose ring betokened a heavenly inspiration, called upon 
all true lovers of Jesus to rally for the great conflict. 

Soon after the adjournment of the Association he wrote that famous 
“Inquiry into the obligations of Christians to use means for the conver¬ 
sion of the heathen. ” That paper was like a new revelation from the 
skies. Every line was luminous, and from first to last it seemed to be 
stamped with the signet of Heaven’s approval. Its effect upon some of 
his brethren was as signal as their first conversion. It was another 
spiritual quickening and resurrection. They saw the truth as they had 
never seen it before. They heard a call to duty that was like the blast 
from the archangel’s trumpet. 

They were the subjects of that divine uplifting which carries the be¬ 
liever beyond that realm of fear and doubt, and fits him for a hero’s work 
and a martyr’s death. That paper was the kindling of a flame, which 
grew into a mighty conflagration. It was the beginning of an illumina¬ 
tion which was destined to fill the world with its glory. ’ 

At the next meeting of the Nottingham Association Carey entered 
the pulpit to preach upon his favorite theme. His countenance was 
radiant. The people knew that he had been with God* from the glory 
that lingered on his brow. His text was from the propecy of Isaiah, 
that man of the misty past, to whom it was given to see and foretell the 
work and triumphs of Carey and his co-laborers. “Enlarge the place of 
thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations; 
spare not; lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt 
break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit 
the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.” 

From this vision of the prophet the young preacher drew two lessons, 
which he discussed with a fervor and eloquence that carried conviction 
to every mind : 


56 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


1: Expect great things from God. 

2. Attempt great things for God. 

Such a sermon as he delivered there and then would make an epoch 
in the life of any people, of any nation, of any continent. In all the cen¬ 
turies that have passed since then men have heard nothing- comparable 
to it in convincing and transforming power. In every word of it there 
was the accent of a conviction born of God. It was the opening of an¬ 
other trumpet stop on the grand, organ of spiritual passion. It was a 
miracle of sacred eloquence, for in it were the birth-throes of modern 
missions. 

Am I not warranted in saying that such preaching is a lost art? That 
art, that power, will not reappear until unbelief and cowardice and self 
are dead in the hearts of God’s ministers, and they are consumed as 
Carey was with zeal for a lost world. 

The feeling generated by that sermon crystalized very soon into “A 
society among Baptists for the propagation of the Gospel among the 
heathens.” That society was formed in the hospitable home of a Christian 
woman. “Woman, last at the cross and first at the sepulchre,” is at the 
beginning, the middle, and the end of every great movement for the 
world’s uplifting. A German poet said: 

“Every hair of her head draws like a bell-rope.” 

But, if my eyes do not deceive me; and the missionary secretaries and 
the religious newspapers are not imposing upon my credulity, bell-ropes 
are but cobwebs in comparison with the cable with which the Baptist 
women of the South are drawing this Centennial car. 

That “Society among the Baptists for the propagation of the Gospel 
among the heathens” was the rea<l “beginning of modern missions.” rt 
was the first missionary body of modern times to give expression to the 
true Gospel conception of Christian obligation and effort. That first 
meeting of the little parent society did not adjourn until every member 
of it had made a contribution in money to the cause to which he had 
pledged his faith and fealty. The aggregate of the contribution was 
“thirteen ponndS, two shillings, and six pence.” The contributors were 
very poor, but rich in faith and zeal for God. 

Constrained by the example of that little band of Baptists, and by 
the burning appeals of their eloquent and heroic leader, other denomi¬ 
nations fell into line with the movement, and soon the London Mission¬ 
ary Society, the Scottish Missionary Society, and the Church Missionary 
Society were formed. 

If William Carey had done nothing more than conceive and inaugu¬ 
rate that movement, he would deserve a large and lofty place in the es¬ 
teem and affection of the Christian world. But to him belongs not only 
the distinction of originating the scheme, but the imperishable glory of 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


57 


leadership in the execution of it. His battle cry was not “Go!” but 
“Follow!” Coveting the experiences, the trials, and the triumphs of an 
exemplar in the difficult and daring undertaking, he said to the little 
band at home, “You hold the rope, and I will go down into the pit.” 

Carey landed in Calcutta, November 11, 1793. Still possessed of that 
spirit of independence and self-denial which had characterized his youth 
and young manhood, he refused support from any source. 

During the first six months of his life in that city, where pagan iniqui¬ 
ties were matched only by the remorseless avarice of British traders, he 
went through a struggle of poverty and suffering that would have dis¬ 
heartened and crushed any one but a moral athlete. 

He at last succeeded in finding employment by which he could make a 
support for himself and family. For five years he was in the service of 
a manufacturer of indigo. During that period he perfected his knowl¬ 
edge of the Bengalee language, wrote a grammar of the same vernacu¬ 
lar, learned Sanscrit, mastered the botany of the country, founded a 
church, and preached the Gospel throughout a district containing two 
hundred villages. All this he did at his own cost. 

These results he accomplished in spite of the mean and despotic oppo¬ 
sition of the East India Company. Of all the monopolies that have 
wronged and robbed men, and made merchandise of human bodies and 
human souls, that East India Company was the most infamous, and the 
most deserving of the reprobation of God and man. 

Seeing no prospect for the protection or perpetuity of his work in Cal¬ 
cutta, Carey left it and went ten miles away to Serampore, a Danish set¬ 
tlement, and began a work under the protection of a more humble and 
liberal people. There he was soon joined by Marshman and Ward, 
names that will be forever historic, because of their association with 
C&rey in untiring and heroic sacrifice for the evangelization of India. 
These three men not only supported themselves and their families, but 
from first to last contributed to the cause of missions in India not less 
than $450,000. 

In that heathen country Carey spent forty-one years in unremitting 
toil, never once visiting his native land. 

With the assistance of his faithful co-laborers he made and published 
the first complete or partial translations of the Bible into forty languages 
and dialects of India, China, Central Asia, and neighboring lands, at a 
cost of $500,000. 

He established printing houses, paper mills, primary schools, schools 
for the education of native girls and women, colleges to train native min¬ 
isters and to evangelize educated Hindoos, and medical missions. He 
established thirty mission stations, translated the whole Bible into San¬ 
scrit, and opened the way for Judson’s great work in Burmah, which re¬ 
sulted in the organization of American Baptists for foreign missionary 
work. 


58 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


Ninety-nine years have rolled their suns away since William Carey 
planted the flag of the Gospel on the shore of India. Beneath that sa¬ 
cred ensign of redemption not less than five hundred thousand native 
converts stand to-day, bravely and patiently continuing the struggle so 
wisely begun by the man whose only ambition and purpose was to lead 
lost men out of the darkness of error and sin into the light and liberty 
of the sons of God. 

We celebrate to-day the beginning of modern missions. By modern mis¬ 
sions we mean missions among the heathen. I have confined my remarks 
mainly to the work of William Carey, because the verdict of Christendom 
and the verdict of history will ever be, that to him, under God, belongs the 
glory of laying the foundations of the great and sacred enterprise of 
modern missions. 

Many useful lessons may be learned from the history which I have but 
briefly outlined: 

1. Here we see something of the sublime possibilities of a single hu¬ 
man life absolutely consecrated to God. “The lives of such men all re¬ 
mind us, we may make our lives sublime.” 

2. Here we see how seemingly insuperable difficulties may be conquered 
by facing them with a martyr’s faith and courage. 

3. Here we see God’s fidelity in fulfilling his promises to men who un¬ 
reservedly put themselves in His hands, and dare to obey Him in the 
presence of any danger. 

4. Here we can see how God can and does use the weak and despised 
things of this world to confound and vanquish the mighty. 

5. Here we can see how God’s work, begun in simple faith and un¬ 
feigned love, will rise from feebleness and seeming insignificance into 
magnificent strength and beauty. 

6. But the thought with which I am specially impressed has reference 
to the condition of the country. 

Just before his untimely and tragic death, Abraham Lincoln uttered 
these words, which have passed into history: “As the result of the war, 
corporations have been enthroned. An era of corruption in high places 
will follow. The money power of the country will reign until all the 
wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.” 

If there is in the condition of our country that which looks like a fulfill¬ 
ing of this prophecy it behooves every patriot to awake to the danger 
which threatens us. 

In an American book, published only a month ago, the author says, 
“We have reached a critical period in our nation’s history. The dire¬ 
ful prophecies made by our enemies seem about to be fulfilled.” 

Now, I do not know that these things are true; but if they are 
true, we are not without a remedy. It is within the power of the 
churches of the living God to eradicate the evils which threaten this 
republic with destruction. 


Of modern missions. 


5G 


Let the men and women who call themselves Christians be Christians 
indeed; let them be missionaries in heart and life , and not merely in name; 
let their intellectual gifts be given to the study of God’s Gospel, and to 
its dissemination both at home and abroad; let them in faith and love 
consecrate their money to the cause for which they have promised to 
live, and, if need be, to die; let them, like Carey, give to God more than 
they keep for themselves; in other words, let them seek first, not their 
own aggrandisement, but the advancement of God’s Kingdom, and there 
will come into this land of ours a power before which neither despotism 
nor lawlessness can live: a power that will draw the rich and the poor 
together in mutual respect and sympathy; a power that will render sa¬ 
cred and inviolate the rights of all classes, and preserve to us, our chil¬ 
dren, and our children’s children, the legacy of freedom and equality 
purchased by the blood of our fathers. 



60 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


THIRD DAY. 


Tuesday Morning, October 4. 

After devotional exercises Rev. J. W. Weddell, of the 
Chicago Standard, emphasized the point that giving greatly 
benefits the giver. 

Prof. H. H. Harris spoke on the Centennial Fund. The 
Centennial should not be used as an occasion of boasting, but 
of gratitude to God for what he has done through our fathers. 
It has been turned into an occasion of raising money; giving 
of money measures the amount of our consecration. The 
Southern Baptist host is a host, an undeveloped mine of mis¬ 
sionary possibilities. We have been doubling our contribu¬ 
tions every ten years. 

We have undertaken to send one missionary for every year 
of this century. The churches are adopting individual mis¬ 
sionaries. I preach each Sunday in many languages. Some 
people give where they can see the results. Why not give 
where you can never see results until you reach the other 
shore? 

THE PERMANENT FUND. 

This permanent fund is not an endowment fund, the inter¬ 
est of which is to be used for mission work. One brother 
gave us some railroad bonds with the request that we hold 
the bonds and use the interest only; we would be glad to 
have some more. The permanent fund is for permanent 
work, such as printing of Bibles, and building chapels. Bro. 
Z. C. Taylor, of Bahai, Brazil, wants to build ten or twelve 
chapels. For this he will need only about fifteen hundred or 
two thousand dollars. He will give one hundred dollars and 
thereby stimulate the natives to give four or five hundred 
dollars more. We must build American houses in Africa, 
sending the timber from New York. Dr. Graves is spending 



OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


61 


his last years in translating the Bible into the literary tongue 
of China. The Foreign Board should publish this. We want 
to lift our people by showing them what they can do The 
million dollars will be nothing in comparison with the salva¬ 
tion of souls in our midst as a resultant of renewed con¬ 
secration. 

Bro. W. D. Powell followed. I have left my work in Mex¬ 
ico in connection with this work. Brethren, our efforts in 
this line are not commensurate with our efforts in other lines. 
A little over one hundred years ago there were two printing 
presses only in America. Now there are thousands. 

When I went to Mexico I had to ride ponies. Now the rail¬ 
roads run all through the country. What boundless resources 
have we! We Southern Baptists pity our English Baptists 
because of their insignificance. They have already raised 
$400,000 for missions. 

We need houses in Mexico. Bro. McCormack recently 
dedicated his house of worship, and he is now reaching more 
people than ever before. Bro. Goldsmith is now paying fifty 
dollars rent per month. Two and one-half thousand would 
build him all the houses needed. We are willing to help our¬ 
selves and have organized a Foreign Mission Board. 

Dr, I. T. Tichenor spoke of the great need of the Perma¬ 
nent Chapel Fund in the Home Mission work. 

Prof. O. T. Mason, LL.D., read a paper on 

THE RELATION OF COMMERCE TO MISSIONS. 

APOSTOLIC CONCEPTION OF “ALL THE WORLD.” 

When the Savior of men delivered to his disciples the last injunction 
to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, prom- 
isingthem that the Holy Ghost should come upon them, he said, “Ye 
shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in 
Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” 

It was entirely impracticable in that day to obey Him, so far as the 
last paragraph is concerned, but it is absolutely practicable now. There 
is not a man in this world, nor a woman, nor a child, that has not been 
many times in touch with the processes and products of our Christian 
civilization, not one that could not be reached with that message of 
Divine love. 


62 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


You can imagine the childishness and the vagueness, in the minds of 
the disciples, of that term “all the world.” They did not know that 
the earth is round. They supposed that it was practically bounded by 
an ocean whose shores were not much further away than the longest 
journeys made by Jews in coming to the passover. The straits of Bab el 
Mandeb on the south, the straits of Gibraltar on the west, the Black 
Sea on the north, and the borders of India on the east were the extremi¬ 
ties of “all the world.” They did not know there was a great Mongo¬ 
lian race, nor much of true Africa. Northern Europe was a blank on 
their maps. And as for Malayans, or Australians, or Davidians, or Poly¬ 
nesians, or Americans, there was not the faintest suspicion of their ex¬ 
istence. 

EARLIEST WORLD COMMERCE. 

“The earliest highway of commerce was from India through the Per¬ 
sian Gulf, up the Euphrates to the Mediterranean; and carpets and 
precious stones were then, as now, carried over this route. Explorations 
and surveys have been recently made along this ‘our future highway to 
India.’ Caravans brought spices from Arabia and rich stuffs from Baby¬ 
lon and Nineveh to the shores of the Red Sea. Solomon made a navy of 
ships and Hiram sent in the navy his ‘Servants, shipmen that had knowl¬ 
edge of the sea, and they brought gold from Ophir, great plenty of almug 
trees and precious stones.’ 

“Tyre and Sidon founded colonies on the shores of the Mediterranean, 
enslaving the Spaniards, compelling them to work the mines of gold and 
silver already opened in Spain. Their ships sailed through the Medi¬ 
terranean by the Pillars of Hercules, into the Atlantic Ocean, turning 
northward to England for tin and copper, and on into the Baltic for fur 
and amber; venturing also southward along the western coast of Africa. 
The Carthaginians inherited the trade of Tyre and Sidon, and, in addi¬ 
tion, opened highways to Egypt and into the interior of Africa, barter¬ 
ing their wares in Egypt for corn and grain, and in Africa for ivory, 
gems and slaves. They planted colonies in Africa and Sicily, and for a 
time were successful rivals of Greece and Rome. The rule of the ocean 
transferred from Asia to Africa remained there for a short time, for the 
day of Europe came with the rise of Greece and Rome. The Greeks 
founded colonies in Asia Minor, Sicily and Italy. Under Pyrrhus their 
armies were defeated by the Romans and their colonies captured. De¬ 
prived of these, her power rapidly declined and she became a Roman 
province.” Hubbard, Nat. Geog. Magazine, Washington, 1892, p. 1-3. 

This vast Roman empire was in the act of solidifying the activities of 
the commercial nations, on the day when our Savior sent his disciples to 
preach his gospel to “all the world.” The methods of conveyance were 
being prepared while the message was being delivered. 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


63 


TRAVELING RESOURCES OF THE APOSTLES. 

This ever-widening circle of injunction, “From Jerusalem to Judea, 
from Judea to Samaria, from Samaria to all the world,” did not involve 
in their imaginations any extraordinary effort in the last progress of 
this journeying. 

Supposing these disciples had been divinely inspired with geographic 
knowledge, with additional instruction concerning the nationalities, the 
races and the languages of the earth, it would have done them no good. 
There were insurmountable difficulties in their way—vast deserts, high 
mountains, rivers, seas, oceans, climates, perils by land, perils on the 
deep, that stood as a menace even to the extension of traffic at that time 
and continued thus for fifteen hundred years. 

They had poor means of getting to those they had heard of. They 
could walk ten miles a day carrying their own luggage. Camels and 
asses and horses would bear them a little further, if not too heavily 
laden and provided the drivers were well paid. Some of the journeys 
they could make in open boats propelled by oars or by lateen sails, and, 
in these, twenty or thirty miles a day would be a prosperous journey. 
The Roman roads afforded highways for lumbering vehicles that would 
not undertake over twenty miles a day, but the post conveyances would 
accomplish twice that distance. They could also send messages and dis¬ 
patches by couriers, as was the Apostles’ custom for short distances. 

PAUL THE COLUMBUS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

If we are to believe all the legends that come down to us, the twelve 
apostles actually outstripped this gradually world-embracing commerce 
and preached the Gospel, even in America, during the first century. 
But the Apostle Paul was the Columbus of the early Christian Church, 
who, going aside from the routes pursued by his apostolic predecessors, 
turned his face Westward and traversed Europe as far as Rome, follow¬ 
ing by land and by sea the currents of trade. Thrice he suffered ship¬ 
wreck, a night and a day he had been in the deep. In journeyings often, 
in perils in water, in perils of robbers, in perils by the heathen, in 
perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness. 

EARLY STANDARD TIME. 

The progress of commerce is marked by the improvements of time¬ 
keeping apparatus; but in the apostolic days there were no clocks, nor 
compasses. Nig'hts were divided into watches and days into hours. 
After that, it was the twinkling of an eye, the flashing of a weaver’s 
shuttle, or an indefinite allusion to something very brief. The unit of 
the timekeeper was the hour. In these days the unit is no longer the 
minute even, but it is the second, and many of the finer observations re¬ 
quire the accurate recording of a hundred thousandth of a second. If 


64 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


we, in our mission work of to-day, keep to those old tardy standards, 
don’t be astonished if we be found often late on the road. Old ways of 
working- had their day. ‘‘They had their day and ceased to be.” 

THE FIRST MESSAGES. 

Finally, the apostles had little to carry except the message on their 
lips. The lives of Christ were not written until thirty years after the 
ascension and the last book of the New Testament until more than sixty 
years. When these precious documents were gotten together, more 
than a hundred years had revolved since the Great Commission. The 
Old Testament in their hands, and the words of the Lord in their 
mouths, that was the ammunition of the Christian warrior—that was 
the Gospel they were bearing to every creature, using the tardy methods 
of their day to reach the ends of the world. 

MEANING OF “ALL THE WORLD” NOW. 

I have said there is no human being that medium industry and trade 
has not reached. After handling many thousands of the tools and the 
industrial products of savage peoples in the remotest parts of the world, 
after examining the museums of the old world and the new, you will be 
astonished to see how iron and other metals have completely taken the 
place of stone. The whale ships have taught the Arctic people all to 
use steel knives and even guns, and everything that comes from that 
quarter is rivited or bladed or hafted with iron or steel. There is no 
tribe of aborigines anywhere in America that have not seen the white 
man—no man to whom the church could not send a Bible if she wished. 

Every river in Northern Asia has borne on its current Russian trade 
on which have breathed disciples of Christ. Into Central Asia, the 
country of the Grand Lama, said to be locked against the European, a 
stream of trade and travel has penetrated and has been flowing from 
the days of Marco Polo. Southern Asia is now the battleground of 
European nationalities, on which they are contending for the commerce. 
English and French and German and Portuguese and American goods 
are sold in every village in Africa—among the true negroes of the Sou¬ 
dan, among the great Bantre Stock south of that, and even among the 
Hottentots and Bushmen of the Cape. And every bale of these goods 
has been handled over and over again by Christian men and women. 

The Malayan peoples, the Papuans and other Oceanic negroes, the 
Australians and the brown Polynesians, for one hundred years at least, 
have bartered the rich productions of their islands for the manufactures 
of Christian lands. There is no desert, no mountain fastness, no island 
in the sea too far away, too rugged, too desolate to deter the intrusion 
of trade. Men coat the inside of rum barrels to stop leakage, the pene¬ 
trating power of gunpowder will carry a rifle projectile through twenty 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


65 


inches of steel. But these two instruments for destroying the bodies 
and the souls of men, gunpowder and rum, have penetrated to the re¬ 
motest corners of the earth and taught man the shortest road to death 
and moral ruin. 

The beads with which the American aborigines have adorned them¬ 
selves for three hundred years or more were made in Venice, under the 
shadow of St. Marks, with its boasted relics of St. Theodore and of the 
author of the Second Gospel. The brass wire and cotton stuffs of the 
African trade were made in Manchester and Birmingham and Leeds and 
Sheffield. While the cotton fibre itself was chiefly reared in the South¬ 
ern States of our Union. It would not be unsafe to say that if you 
were to follow the cotton threads spun from the Southern staple of the 
United States they would lead you to every home, every family, every 
individual of our race. It may be that God has purposely laid this on 
you. These wonderfully delicate fibres, raised by your own hands, at 
your own doorsides, follow them for one moment. They would lead you 
first to all of our own seaports and manufacturing towns, then to Liver¬ 
pool and Manchester and Leeds, or to the factory cities of the Continent 
of Europe. Then they take up their wandering journeys. Keep your 
hold on them, your prayers at least may follow them now to the Polar 
Regions, where the unfortunate Greely lay at the point of death shielded 
only by a cotton tent; now with Nordenskjold and his brave comrades of the 
Vega with sails of Southern cotton along the northern shores of Europe 
and Asia to Behring Sea; now, this very dao with the intrepid Roekhill, in 
the heart of Asia, making his way to the capital of the Grand Lama; 
now with the energetic and avaricious peddlers and traders among the 
aborigines of both continents. In all your wanderings with these won¬ 
derful little threads of your own rearing, you would leave no land or 
water unexplored. If you were to take the wings of the morning, which I 
understand to mean the earliest sunbeams, and travel with the sun the 
live long day, seeing all he sees, your eyes would never once be away 
from the products of the fields where most of you have spent your whole 
lives. If the Southern Baptist Convention would put the Bible wherever 
Southern Cotton had gone, the world would be evangelized. 

PROGRESS OF A GREAT IDEA. 

How slowly and yet how grandly has this word “all” unfolded itself 
upon the comprehensions of men, Moses thought of it as the panorama 
of creation was rolled past his mental eye. All peoples, high and low in 
culture, have had their cosmogonies and gathered into an organic sys¬ 
tem all worlds and all things as they comprehended them. David sought 
to grasp it when he considered the Heavens to be the work of God’s 
fingers. John beheld the glorified Savior as the one by whom all things 
were made and without whom was not anything made that was made. 
These were happy inspirations. In all the ages our race, after culti- 


66 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


vating acquaintance with the discrete phenomena around them, has 
been all the while co-ordinating- them, making them organic, reading 
life into them. 

Man has learned by degrees to comprehend all things as parts of a 
single mechanism. Sir Isaac Newton and Kepler conceived all objects 
and all worlds to be held by universal gravitation. And in our century, 
von Baer and Humboldt held that the world, in all its forces and ma¬ 
terials, is an integrated cosmos. Anyone who is the least familiar with 
the progress of philosophy will recall that since the dawn of written 
history the thoughts of men were tending to this unification. Shortly 
after this first effort at comprehensive unity Mayer, Rumford and Joule 
invented the methods of demonstrating the oneness of physical forces, 
the conservation of energy. Wollaston, Kirchoff and Bunsen devised 
the delicate apparatus to prove the chemical identity of all worlds. 
Lamarck, Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Darwin taught the consanguinity of 
all living beings. Helmholtz and Meyer co-ordinated nervous excita¬ 
tion with mental activity. Comte and Spencer asserted the unity of all 
sensible phenomena. Newton, Leibnitz and Hamilton projected their 
minds beyond phenomena and invented mathematics of four or more di¬ 
mensions, conceiving of worlds and systems that under the present order 
of nature can have no objective reality. Over all this, into many souls 
have come notions of infinite space and time and causation and person¬ 
ality. The idea of limitation to thought or achievement no longer enters 
the imagination. The depth of the sea, the distances of the stars, the 
concealment of the earth’s treasures, the minuteness of the springs of 
life and sense, the multiplicity and complicity of phenomena are only so 
many incitements to a wider, deeper, loftier comprehension of that Holy 
Spirit who was in all ages to accompany the church, and who was to be 
the perpetual reservoir of power in all lands and ages. 

GREAT IDEAS SLOWLY ADOPTED BY THE PEOPLE. 

After the exalted minds had come little by little to comprehend these 
meanings of the word “all,” how slow the people were in coming up 
with them. First the universities, then the colleges, then the schools, 
then people of common intelligence; but behind them, always, was a 
vast herd that comprehended nothing. 

It almost broke the Savior’s heart when he was on earth that his 
Apostles were so slow of heart to believe. 

The same is true now of those of Christ’s disciples who read his in¬ 
junction to evangelize the whole world. The Catholic missions in the 
sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were characterized 
with praiseworthy zeal, but their motive was propagandism. One hun¬ 
dred years ago Carey caught a glimpse of their import, and then they 
seized a few other noble Protestant minds. Seventy-five years ago they 
were felt in our owq country by a little band of enlightened souls. You 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


67 


who are before me feel their momentous import now. A small percent¬ 
age of your people are awaking to their significance. But in all our 
churches the vast throng are still living in the folk-lore period of 
Christianity. 

Think of this for one moment, in passing. The success of commerce 
is owing to the fact that so many are eagerly engaged in it, from the 
merchant prince down to the street fakir. Matthew Arnold says, 
“Human progress consists in the contiuued increase in the number of 
those who, ceasing to live the animal life alone and to feel the pleasures 
of sense only, come to participate in the intellectual life also and to find 
enjoyment in the things of mind. 

The awakening of commerce was the awakening of great masses of 
peoples to participate in its activities. The thing to pray for in the 
church is a like great moving of all Christ’s followers and an uplifting 
of the masses to participate in the spiritual life and find enjoyment in 
the things of the soul. 

DRIFTING ABOUT IN THE EDDIES. 

As an illustration of the conservative conduct of the church as a 
whole, the following incident will suffice: 

On the 22d of June the steamer Trave ran into the schooner Taylor 
five hundred miles east of New York City and broke her in two. The 
stern drifted northward and the bow southward, the former landing on 
August 3d near Portland, Maine; the latter, when last seen, was just off 
Cape Henlopen, Delaware. Neither portion has at any time gotten into 
the Gulf Stream, but both have been driven by the wind and tossed, the 
stern probably following the cold southerly current between our coast 
and Gulf Stream, making its way toward the point where Columbus 
landed. I mention this incident in order to throw the following account 
into bolder relief. 

THE GREAT OCEANIC STREAM. 

In the year 1890, the hydrographer of the United States Navy caused 
to be thrown into the Atlantic Ocean over one hundred bottles in which 
letters were enclosed, asking the finder to write the date and place of 
finding on the same sheet and enclose the paper to the Navy Department 
in Washington. A great many of these bottles were cast overboard op¬ 
posite the coast of Spain and of West Africa, and every one of them 
landed in the little Antilles, and some of them on Watlings Island or 
Guanahani or San Salvador. They were carried to the place of Colum¬ 
bus’ landing by a stream flowing in the ocean since the Tertiary Age. 

It was the same stream that insensibly wafted the little fleet of Colum¬ 
bus to the New World. Long before his day Phcenecians and Romans 
and Spaniards had ventured beyond the Pillars of Hercules, had skirted 
the coast of the Dark Continent, to the Maderia, the Canaries, the Cape 


68 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


Verde.Islands; they had often looked with anxious eyes to the west and 
wondered what lay beyond. The stream whispered unto every one of 
them, “Come into my current, come into my current, and I will show 
you a new continent,” but they heeded it not. When the Venetian trav¬ 
eler and his successors had brought back overland fresh news of Cipango 
and India, then it was Columbus sailed away for gold on this very stream 
and knew it not. 

When men first looked out upon this sea bounded by no shore and 
upon vast land steppes and deserts to which there seemed to be no limit, 
they stood affrighted. Each improvement in the art of navigation, each 
invention of better conveyance and transportation gave them confidence 
and turned their stuperstition into boldness first and then into hope. 
One hundred years ago the Protestant world stood paralized in the 
presence of the mission cause. To-day, with some boldness they venture 
forth upon this inviting sea, to-morrow they will speed their ships and 
caravans to occupy the earth. 

So, from the Ascension morning began to blow over the “all the 
world” the breath of the Comforter. The currents have been flowing, 
flowing, flowing ’round the world and returning into themselves. The 
whole earth is filled with His glory, though men knew it not. Lured 
by Columbus’ love of gold, men have followed the streams of Providence 
to the sources of all material wealth and to the humblest consumer of in¬ 
dustrial products. There is also a world-encircling river whose stream 
will make glad the city of our God. Oh, friends, launch now upon that 
blessed stream. How long already have men hugged the shores. Turn 
now on this very quadro-centennial of Columbus’ act of faith and trust 
the Spirit’s guidance. 

MAGNITUDE OF THE WORLD’S COMMERCE. 

Let us look for one moment at the magnitude of the world’s commer¬ 
cial activity. The bountiful storehouse of God yields its diversified 
productions in the three kingdoms of nature—mineral, vegetal, animal, 
—to supply the wants of our race. The exploitation of these resources 
is the primary industry of men. The amount of coal and metallic pro¬ 
duct each year is counted by billions of tons. The secret places of the 
earth yield their treasure, the lands their harvests of food, fibres, and 
woods, the seas their products by thousands of millions of tons. 

The muscular power of man and of beasts, the motive power of water 
and wind and steam and electricity used up in the manufacture of this 
product are gauged by billions of horse-power. The value added by 
these mechanical transformations exceed many times the cost of the raw 
material, and all the time that this ransacking of the earth is going on 
and these factory wheels are spinning round, the stream of traffic is 
bearing it all along on the world’s highways. Not satisfied with 
these ? men have devised artificial highways. They would flood the 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 6§ 

Caspian Sea, the Dead. Sea, the Sahara Desert. They have opened the 
Suez Canal, and are projecting- a railroad from the Mediterranean to 
Bombay. The Russians have already daily communication between St. 
Petersburg and the Pacific Ocean. On our own continent, the Canadian 
Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Central Pacific, the Southern Pacific, 
three canals across the Isthmus projected, and a railroad to extend the 
whole length of the continent, North and South, supply the missing 
links in our globe-encircling network. The transportation of all this 
material to these routes on human backs and friendly beasts and wagons 
and sledges begin the journey and then the trains and ships take up the 
ceaseless round involving billions of dollars more. The exchange of 
things means the exchange of money, but all the coin in the world 
would not transact the business of the world one hour in a year. Hence, 
letters of credit and international comit and drafts and checks circulate 
everywhere to the amount of trillions of dollars. Mails, newspapers, 
advertising, expositions, telegraphs, telephones, commercial agents, 
tariffs, revenues, monopolies, bankruptcies, financial stress—these are 
the things that occupy every day the nervous energies of men and dis¬ 
turb their dreams at night. 

On this stream of commerce are also borne the ideas, the arts, the 
social life, the culture of mankind. Through it the world is becoming 
one. Hundreds of little tribes and tongues shrinking away in the eddies 
of history will soon be lost forever. The business of the world is one. 
The language of the world is practically one. The science of the world 
is one. (The Japanese name all their minerals and plants and animals 
with the Greek binomial nomenclature.) Governments are borrowing 
and interchanging methods. One system of clocks are now running the 
world over. The Christian era is the world’s calendar. The metric or 
decimal system will soon prevail universally. The nations are moving 
toward universal peace, all because these uniformities are in accordance 
with the best interests of trade. Those nations that are not so moving 
will not survive long, while those that are will form a constantly grow¬ 
ing family of nations. 

Following the routes of this universal trade, it took Dr. Mabie, Secre¬ 
tary of the American Baptist Missionary Union, only eight months to 
make a journey of visitation around the world in the year 1891. Carey was 
five months in getting to India, and Judson seven months in reaching 
Rangoon. A letter from Boston will reach Dr. Clough in thirty days, 
and there is no difficulty in sending telegrams to him as to other mis¬ 
sionaries in Asia. The salaries are supplied through the regular bills 
of exchange and it is easier to pay many of them than it is to settle a 
debt by mail from this city, in Louisville, to some towns in Kentucky not 
far away. 


70 


Centennial celebration 


THE NEWSPAPER. 

In out of the way places men and women indulge in silly neighborhood 
gossip; but the reading public indulge in “world gossip.” 

“The great metropolitan newspapers addressing an audience of mil¬ 
lions each morning, sending out expeditions into the remotest corners of 
the world, exploring unknown seas and climbing hitherto inaccessible 
mountains, dictating to presidents and bullying statesmen, foretelling 
news so accurately as almost to compel the vindication of its predictions; 
delving into the inmost heart of man and woman to pluck therefrom a 
secret dearer than life itself; invading and desecrating the sanctity of 
the fireside and violating all that the family and the individual hold 
dear, to detect crime and insure its punishment; t<5 pursue malefaction 
beyond the reach of the law; to annihilate space and make all the differ¬ 
ence of time in the world as nothing—the great marvel of the intellec¬ 
tual and material powers of man at the period of their highest develop¬ 
ment.” J. A. Cockerill, Cosmopolitan, N. Y., October, 1892, 695. 

ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 

This commerce, of which we have been speaking, is so wisely admin¬ 
istered, so full of expedients. It does not send to any people the things 
they do not need and even caters to their idiosyncrasies, becoming all 
things to all men. I am told by eminent explorers of the Congo that so 
fastidious are the negroes in regard to their tastes that even a slight 
difference in the shade of beads has consigned the venturer to a total 
loss of his goods. The great success of missions, likewise, in some places 
and among some peoples, and the great failure in others surely cannot 
be the fault of the divine Comforter, nor yet of the missionary as regards 
his zeal or motives. The cause lies in the fact that we have not gone to 
school to the children of this world, that we have not studied ethnology 
in all its branches and have sought to clothe every message everywhere 
in the same garb. 

COMMERCE AN ORGANIZED ACTIVITY. 

Another feature of commercial success, demanding our closest study, 
is its wise system of centres of force and activity. The organization of 
the commercial forces of the world about definite centres is not a matter 
of chance, but an example of the universal law of the mutual alliance of 
spiritual and natural forces. If on a terrestrial globe you were to put 
one point of a pair of dividers upon the city of London and with the 
other point were to mark off a hemisphere, you would include therein 
nearly all the land surface of the earth of any value, save Australia. In 
other words, London is the centre of the land surface of the earth, of the 
commercial, manufacturing, monetary world. Upon a good map, show¬ 
ing all the trunk lines of railroads or the main steamship routes, or the 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 71 

/ 

submarine cables or the postal system, or the monetary exchanges, one 
is reminded of the ganglionic centres of the nervous system. 

As an example of a systematic effort to put all the individuals of the 
earth who are engaged in the same work in touch, by the speediest and 
most efficient apparatus, Professor Henry’s interpretation of the Smith- 
son bequest is instructive. The will reads, “I give to the United States 
the residue of my estate to found in the city of Washington an establish¬ 
ment to be called the Smithsonian Institution for the increase and diffu¬ 
sion of knowledge among men.” Henry at once conceived the idea of 
organizing all institutions, all libraries, all museums, all societies, all 
lonely workers into a solid brotherhood with means of easy and unex- 
pensive intercommunication. And this is done. A ny student of science 
is in possession of the means of speaking to his brother on the other side 
of the earth without a penny of cost. There are many who do not know 
of this blessed agency, many who do not avail themselves of it. But 
that is because they are not in that wondrous stream whose currents 
move around the world. All this interchange of thought and of the 
material results of labor is helped by the consciousness of every man en¬ 
gaged that he is a part of it and every coterie of learned men becomes 
a new centre of propagation. 

Far be it from me to criticise the methods of the fathers. If the next 
century witnesses so much progress in organic integration and growth 
as the last has witnessed in differentiation and diffusion the Protestant 
churches will have causes of joy. But why wait one moment. Our mis¬ 
sionaries do not know one another’s work. The church does not know 
the missionaries. Connections - have never been established in some 
places, in others they have been broken down. The circulation of blood 
from heart to members, from members back to heart, is not free and 
vitalizing. Our next step, it seems to me, should be in the direction of 
more lively fellowship. 

THE ETHICAL CODES OF COMMERCE. 

The questionable morality of much of the world’s trade has sorely put 
back the progress of religion in the world. The millennium has not yet 
dawned on the commerce of nations and much of it does not make for 
righteousness, but it is getting nearer and nearer to the golden rule. 
Piracy has been swept from the seas. Christian nations are breaking up 
the slave trade in Africa. Highway robbery and wanton destruction of 
wealth are remanded to the frontier and society is outraged by their per¬ 
petration. There are great evils remaining still, but good honest people 
and religious people countenance them and are supported by them im¬ 
mediately or remotely, and so long as that exists their day of judgment 
is far off. The devoted missionary often finds his ground pre-empted 
by the offscourings of his own race. 

The thorough Christianization of the world’s commerce must be a 


centennial celebration 


n 

work of time. If the whole business world were to submit itself this 
moment to the sole guidance of this universal Spirit of holiness, the sys¬ 
tem of world’s traffic which even now turns private vices into public 
benefits would be paralyzed. Nearly two hundred years ago Maunde- 
ville wrote: 

U T’ enjoy the World’s Conveniences, 

Be famed in War, yet live in Ease 
Without great vices, is a vain 
Eutopia seated in the Brain. 

Fraud, Luxury and Pride must live, 

Whilst we the Benefits receive.” 

[The Fable of the Bees, London, 1724, Tonson, p. 23.] 

In its present complex moral state the world’s business is likened unto 
a man which sowed good seed in his field. But while men slept, his 
enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. . But 
when the blade was sprung up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the 
tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him: 
Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it 
tares? He said unto them. An enemy hath done this. The servants said 
unto him. Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, 
Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with 
them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and in the time of 
harvest I will say unto the reapers, Gather together ye first the tares, 
and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my 
barn. 

HOW COMMERCE MAY BE SANCTIFIED. 

But commerce must be refined by religion the more religion avails it¬ 
self of commerce to save the race. If men put holiness into the weight, 
the measure, thS time, the quality of their contribution to business, that 
holiness will remain there as an ingredient. It is the leaven that the 
women placed in three measures of meal. If a certain brand of goods 
goes out always of standard quality and measure, that firm succeeds, 
while poor quality and light weight firms die. By a law of nature, the 
survival of the fittest, righteousness will endure in the long run and be¬ 
come a growing instinct of trade. 

More than that, this Holy Spirit will see to it that every act tending 
to universal good will get into this great current of world-reformation. 
Somehow, the widow’s mite fell into this cosmic river and goes on for all 
time speaking the praises of self-denying charity. There are thousands 
of our cults and oddities in our creeds for which the Holy Spirit does not 
care a snap. They drift in the eddies along the shore and are stranded; 
but He is pledged that no good word shall be spoken and no good deed 
be done in vain—the greater its motive, the farther it will go by its own 
momentum. 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


73 


The future progress of commerce in holiness will obey the law of each 
man’s progress in the same direction. His good deeds bless others and 
he is blessed in turn. With these enlarged resources of grace he be¬ 
comes a greater blessing to his kind and he himself is still more blessed- 
And so the reciprocal work goes on. The act of refining and being re¬ 
fined is mutual. Herein will lie the great benefit of utilizing all the 
church’s talent, of enlisting the whole church in missions. As active 
business men become engaged in evangelizing the world, the work will 
progress with accelerated velocity. These consecrated merchants, 
bankers, manufacturers, shippers will know where the main currents of 
the world’s activities are flowing. They will tell you where to send your 
missionaries to catch, to intercept the great world-caravans of influential 
people. They themselves sailing on the currents of world-encompassing 
activities will lend their daily sanctification to enforce the teachings of 
the men whom they send to preach Christ’s gospel to every creature. 

Upon the tomb of the Hon. Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, is this 
inscription: “Next to the Christian religion I know of nothing to be 
compared with the influence of a free, social and commercial intercourse, 
in softening asperities, removing prejudices, extending knowledge and 
promoting human happiness.” The truth of this declaration is confined 
in every treaty, in every international conference and exposition, in the 
public opinion of all nations. The doors opened by commerce for the 
spread of religion are innumerable and religious obligations incalculable. 

THE BETTERING OF COMMERCE BETTERS THE OPPOR¬ 
TUNITIES OF SPREADING RELIGION. 

All these opportunites are available, even in the carrying on of a com¬ 
merce not wholly sanctified in its appliances, its methods and the prod¬ 
ucts of its activities. But how much better for the sender and the con¬ 
signee if the creative and sanctifying Spirit of God had breathed upon 
its operations in the woods, the fields, the mines, the waters; in the mills 
and shops; in the wagons and cars and ships; in the banking houses and 
markets and expositions; in the minds and correspondence of its agents. 
The railroad tracks and the ocean highways would be the way of life; the 
charts and time tables and bills of lading would be the truth, and the 
Holy Spirit would be its animating principle. The world would be re¬ 
deemed. 

The reaction of the church already upon commerce along che mission¬ 
ary line is shown in the fact that the translation of the Bible and cate¬ 
chisms and religious books into many hundreds of languages have first 
made the world acquainted with those languages. You were well in¬ 
structed on this topic by Professor Harris. The presence of the Catholic 
missionaries long ago among the American aborigines taught them the 
value of their goods and saved them from destruction. The same is true 


74 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


of later missions. No men have done more to open up Africa to the 
world-commerce than Livingstone and the other distinguished mission¬ 
aries in the same area. It was the missionaries that saved our civilized 
tribes in Indian Territory from annihilation. 

ACTION AND REACTION. 

The bringing of the mass of Christians individually into this world- 
encompassing stream of consecration will react upon the ethics of com¬ 
merce—retail, wholesale, interstate and international. The raising of 
the average moral tone of commerce in relation to the Savior’s teaching 
will increase the sanctifying and propagandist power of commerce. As 
early man became more civilized, his dog and his horse became more 
gentle; as they became more gentle, men became less brutal. These 
great beasts of burden, called ships and railroad trains, may be civilized 
and Christianized and these will Christianize and civilize in their turn, 
just as they have been demoralized and have demoralized in turn. 

THE CHURCH AND ITS RESOURCES. 

The progress of the church in availing itself of the avenues and con¬ 
veniences of trade has not been uniform. The first messengers were not 
backward in this regard. During the thousand years of darkness, from 
the fourth until the thirteenth century, both trade and church were 
sluggish. The revival of commerce at the centres of Venice and Genoa 
was stimulated first by the crusades and these kindled the zeal for traffic, 
and this created the renaissance of Europe. But the Moorish successes 
held back this glory for a while until Prince Henry the Navigator and 
Ferdinand and Isabella had restored the cross to its supremacy in the 
west. In the next fifty years Columbus discovered the New World, John 
Cabot the continent of North America, and Vasco deGama sailed around 
the Cape of Good Hope to India, to set aflowing the old stream westward 
from that land. The lust for gold and zeal for souls went hand in hand 
in all these enterprises down to the end of the eighteenth century. Com¬ 
merce moved on by its slow processes and religion was only propagan- 
dism. Both were in the streams but knew them not. The resources of 
spiritual grace were almost as hidden as the mines of coal, and the dis¬ 
covery of the steam engine and the commencement of Protestant mis¬ 
sions were both in the future. Carey was the contemporary of the men 
who conceived the locomotive and the steamboat, and I have been won¬ 
dering whether the new spirit of missions would fill men’s hearts with 
love as this new age of steam is filling their minds with plans for gain. 
At any rate, the world is now explored. The world is a network of 
commercial activities. Following its teachings and using its resources, 
there should henceforth be no foreign missions and domestic missions, 
but world-missions, world-embracing missions, all-the-world-and-every- 
creature missions, as thou saidst Blessed Lord, at first. 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


THE CLIMAX. 

Like Ezekiel, when the Spirit, of whom we have been speaking, lifted 
him above the earth as it goes spinning around in space, we even now 
hear the noise of the wings ,pf the living creatures that touch one an¬ 
other, so crowded are they in the great docks, and the noise of the 
wheels over against them and a noise of a mighty rushing. 

Fly swifter, ye white wings of commerce, and carry these messages of 
love over every sea. Spin faster, ye wheels of iron along your tracks of 
steel, over every land—the noise of a great rushing as of a mighty wind 
attend you. Every sail speed forward, whither the spirit leads, and 
turn not as ye go. And ye flying wheels, animated by the Holy One, 
when He goes, go ye; when He stands still, stand ye; when He is exalted 
above the tricks and fashions of this world’s business, be ye lifted up 
over against Him. Fly like lightning with the message. Fly, fly so 
swiftly, ye trains of a sanctified commerce, that nave and spokes and tire 
be undistinguishable in your flight, and eyes of Beryl sparkle in your 
rims. Anticipate the sun, ye telegraphic massages, passing on the 
watchword from wall to wall of the globe-possessing Zion. And as the 
hum of a great city is made up of innumerable sounds that rise and die, 
let there never be a moment when the sound of our Lord’s praises shall 
not fill the earth. 


AFTERNOON SESSION. 

The discussion of the “Missionary Outlook” was opened 
by Bro. Carter Helm Jones. The outlook depends on him 
who looks. One hundred years ago it was described as the 
“dream of a dreamer who had dreamed that he had been 
dreaming.” Judson said that the outlook was as bright as 
the promises of God. 

How does it look now? There are three factors: God, our¬ 
selves, the heathen. God loved them when they were in 
crime. He loved the islands when their inhabitants were 
eating each other. He gives his marching orders, “Go ye.” 
The world is now open to missions. A treaty of England 
with mountain-girded Thibet will open her soon. “Behold, 
I have set before thee an open door.” Let us look at our¬ 
selves as still another factor. We are three millions. The 
wealth that puts to shame the fabled wealth of Aladdin’s 
lamp is ours. On last Sunday the jewels on the bosom of 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


70> 

Baptists would have sent hundreds of shiploads of mission¬ 
aries to the benighted. 

There are six thousand young men in our colleges who 
have expressed their willingness to,go, if they should have 
an opportunity. It used to be thought that only second-class 
men went to foreign fields. Among this six thousand who 
have offered themselves are men of power and godliness. 
The outlook of missions depends on us. God loves them and 
says, “Go ye v —the doors are open. What will we do? We 
have a trinity of calls—God calls. We have a Macedonian 
call. We have a voice from behind. Therefore, in view of 
Carey, in view of Judson, let us press forward. 

Bro. H. C. Roberts followed with remarks on the power of 
prayer to give us money for the great missionary work. He 
suggested that the pastors ask the people to pray for missions, 
and as we pray let us open our own pocketbooks. 

Bro. M. D. Jeffries followed with interesting remarks about 
personal piety. We don’t give because our hearts are full of 
the world. We have the cash for colts, but not for the 
spread of the Gospel. 

Dr. P. S. Henson, of Chicago, had promised to speak on 
Tuesday night, but was providentially hindered from being 
present. He sent, however, his address on 

HEROES. 

There are heroes and heroes. There are mock heroes that pompously 
display their tawdry trappings like the jackdaw in the fable, presently 
to be plucked of their pretentious plumage, and to be exposed in their 
native nakedness to the scorn of men and angels. Such was the meteoric 
Boulanger, who not long ago blew out his brains—what little he had— 
on the grave of his mistress. The triumph of the wicked is short, and 
the memory of the wicked shall rot. 

And there are martial heroes, some of whom are noble enough, as 
Gordon and Havelock and Grant and Howard and Lee and Jackson, 
while many accounted such have been only remorseless butchers, wad¬ 
ing through blood and making a pavement of corpses for their march to 
glory. 

And there are civil heroes—for peace hath its victories no less than 
war. Cicero was no less a hero than Caesar, Lincoln than Grant, Colum- 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


< i 

bus that discovered a new world tharj Wellington that saved the old world 
from the ambitious grasp of the unprincipled Corsican. 

And heroes without number—all to fortune and to fame unknown— 
village Hampdens, mute inglorious Miltons, who bravely did their duty 
in inconspicuous spheres, and lived and died, “unknown, unhonored, 
and unsung.” 

Railroad engineers, with hand on the throttle, rushing to certain 
death, but mindful to the last of the precious freight of life committed 
to their charge, and sacrificing their own lives to save the lives of oth¬ 
ers. Firemen that, through smoke and flame and amid toppling walls, 
spring to the rescue of imperiled human beings. Patient and pale-faced 
wives and mothers that, with deathless love in their hearts, and with 
no eyes on them but the angels’ and God’s, toil on in the treadmill till 
they drop exhausted. Aye, and husbands and fathers that, with help¬ 
less families clinging to them, struggle on like brave swimmers in mad 
waters. 

God bless the heroes everywhere! And he does and will. 

Grim, grand, rugged old Carlyle has written nobly of Heroes and 
Hero Worship. Right clearly has he shown how the spirit of hero 
worship is inherent in us all, and that this ineradicable spirit shapes 
our characters and molds our destinies. We do well to set before us 
“The Ideal Hero,” and the things that must distinguish him. 

1. And first of all there must be breadth of view. The near-sighted, 
narrow-minded, hide-bound, selfish mdn has not enough in him to make 
a hero of. 

To breadth of view great learning is not always a prime necessity. A 
man may be a bookworm and be worth little more than an angleworm. 
Many a mighty scholar have we known who was simply buried in books. 
—“plunged to the hilt in musty tomes and rusted in.” Nor does travel 
always contribute to it, as the supreme selfishness of many a “globe¬ 
trotter” that we have occasionally encountered, in our travels, conclu¬ 
sively attests. 

He only has breadth of view who has largeness of heart. He may be 
an humble carpenter, or a “consecrated cobbler,” but he must love God 
and sympathize with man, must keep step with time, and take in 
eternity. 

2. And there must be height of motive. 

There may be fearlessness to the poino of foolhardiness, as in the case 
of him who lately walked a tight-rope across Niagara’s awful gorge, but 
nobody, unless an idiot, would ever think of calling him a hero. Men 
have crossed the Atlantic in a yawl boat just to show that they could do 
it, but have hardly won the admiration accorded to Columbus. 

There have been far more brilliant strategists than Washington, but 
many of their names are infamous, while his is immortal. It is the altar 
that sanctifies the gift, and the motive that glorifies the act. 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


It is this that lifts to nobility what else would be servility, and makes 
foolhardiness sublimest heroism. When Sam Patch jumps to his death 
all sensible men say: There goes a fool! But when a brave swimmer 
leaps into a roaring flood to rescue a drowning child, as all dripping he 
lays his precious burden on the shore, Heaven and earth shout: Bravo! 

When duty calls and love girds for action, then character rises to the 
height of the heroes. 

3. Bravery of encounter is another element that is absolutely essential 
to the real hero. 

There is beauty in duty, however smoothly the course of duty runs, 
but the quality of which we have been speaking means toil and tears, 
strife and struggle, battle and blood. It braves fire or flood, wild beasts 
or the wilder fury of a mob. It dares to stand for God and truth against 
a world in arms. 

It means Arnold Winkelried gathering up a sheaf of spear-points into 
his own bosom, and so making way for liberty. It means Curtius leap¬ 
ing, with his armor on, into the yawning gulf and closing the gulf by the 
sacrifice of Rome’s most precious thing—a loyal heart. 

It means Horatius at the bridge, Leonidas at the pass, and Martin 
Luther at the Diet of Worms. 

4. But the crowning glory of the real hero is calm, invincible persist¬ 
ency of purpose. Almost anybody can make a dash. A whirlwind 
sweep of cavalry is not the thing that tries most sorely the metal of a 
soldier, but the tramp, tramp, tramp, for days and nights, beneath weep¬ 
ing skies, over miry roads, hungry and cold and footsore and homesick, 
the wearisome work in the trenches, the waiting under fire for the long 
delayed order to charge upon the enemy. 

The dauntless courage that holds right on though sinews crack, and 
nerves quiver, and wounds bleed, and darkness deepens, and victory seems 
far away: that cuts down the bridge behind, and burns the ships, and 
faces the foe, determined to do, and dare, and, if need be, die, but never 
fall back. This is heroism of sublimest sort. 

This shines resplendent in God’s Holy Word, which is nothing other 
than a bundle of biographies, where truth is set before us, not so much 
in philanthropic sentiments, and pious precepts as in saintly lives, radiant 
with divinest beauty, and going forth to highest duty. Truth incarnate 
—this is what the world wants and the Bible gives. And while it found 
splendid expression in many Old Testament saints, who, through faith, 
subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, 
stopped the mouths of liars, quenched the violence of fire, 
escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made 
strong, waxed “valiant in fight and put to flight the armies of the 
aliens,” yet none of these, nor all of them together are, for a moment to 
be compared to Him in whom humanity finds its culmination and its 
crown- the Son of Man—the Son of God—the one ideal, and yet most 
real hero—Jesus of Nazareth—the “Captain of Salvation.” 

' q j 

- ' '■>■/) * 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 79 

All others are worthless paste—He is the priceless Kooh-i-nor. All 
others are Lilliputians—He is the one colossal hero of all the ages. 

If breadth of view he wanted, what breadths of view distinguished him! 

By birth He came of Jewish stock, and whatever may have been true 
of the grand old patriarch and prophets, the Jew had come in Christ’s 
time to be the very synonym of narrowness and bigotry. He cordially 
hated his neighbors and kinsmen, the Samaritans, while he despised the 
Gentiles as nothing other than dogs. And yet this Jewish carpenter 
of Nazareth was broader than Galilee, broader than Judea and Samaria, 
broader than all the Orient, broader than Orient and Occident, broader 
than any race—all races—anytime—all time. His view swept immensi¬ 
ty and eternity and all the world’s foremost thinkers have never come 
up to it, and never will while the ages roll. 

And what height of motive! High as the heavens it mounted. Yea, 
what depth—far down to the gates of hell stooped his love. Like Atlas 
he carried the world—only not upon his shoulders but his heart. “He 
loved us and gave himself for us,” and “greater love hath nb man than 
this that a man lay down his life for his friends.” 

“He came not to be ministered unto but to minister,” and can there be 
a nobler inspiration than love to man? Aye, verily, there can be, and 
we make bold to proclaim it, in this age, which is nothing if not human¬ 
itarian. Love to man is beautiful indeed, but it is not the matter of su- 
premest moment. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
strength.” This is the first and great commandment. Christ loved our 
race and died to redeem it, but his motive had a higher mark: “Lo, I 
come; in the volume of the Book it is written of me; I delight to do thy 
will, O God.” 

Not only was there the impulse of the mightiest motive, but the mani¬ 
festation of the sublimest courage. And there was solemn need, for 
never went hero forth to such terrible encounter. Hercules had his 
mighty labors—but no labors like these. Other souls had had their 
sorrows, but of a truth He could say, “There is no sorrow like my sor¬ 
row.” He had to face the malice of men, and the hate of hell alone. 
And not only so, but he had to endure the wrath of God. It pleased the 
Lord to bruise Him. He put Him to grief. He laid upon Him the ini¬ 
quity of us all. One drop from the vials of the wrath would burn a sin¬ 
ner to a cinder. All the contents of these were emptied on the head of 
Christ. One sin would sink a world to hell—so frightful would be its 
weight. But all the sins of all the race were laid upon the Lamb of 
God. Never did Heaven look upon such anguish as He endured in the 
garden and on the Cross. 

Most heroes are hurried on in blindness to their tragic fate, if tragic 
fate await them. Even the immortal six hundred who made that splen¬ 
did charge at Balaklava knew not for a certainty that every man of them 


80 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


was riding to his death. But Christ knew. With clearest consciousness 
he realized the dreadful tragedy to which He went, and yet he went 
confronting all, comprehending all; clear as a clarion rang out the voice 
of the dauntless hero, Lo, I come. 

Not only so, but in Him as never in any other was there patient per¬ 
sistence to the bitter end. “He came unto His own and His own received 
Him not.” Never was there such lavishment of love, such expenditure 
of power with such miserably poor apparent results. Hated, hounded, 
betrayed, forsaken—His whole pathway darkened by the shadow of the 
Cross, He moved right on with unstaying step and unfaltering purpose. 
He set His face steadfastly to go up to Jerusalem, notwithstanding He 
knew all the anguish that awaited Him there. Long time before it had 
been said of Him: “He shall not fail nor be discouraged,” and he did not 
fail, nor was he discouraged. Pale, patient, wounded, bleeding, thorn 
crowned, ALONE, he pressed forward past Gethsemane, past 
Golgotha, past the gates of death and hell until, over all triumphant, He 
swept past &t last the gates of glory, and now sits at the right hand of 
the Most High, from henceforth expecting all His enemies be made His 
footstool. And they will be, for “I saw Heaven opened, and behold a 
white horse and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and 
in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame 
of fire, and on his head were many crowns, and he had a name written 
which no man knew but he himself, and he was clothed in a vesture dip¬ 
ped in blood, and his name is called ‘The Word of God,’ and the armies 
which are in Heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine 
linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that 
with it he should smite the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod 
of iron; and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of 
Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name 
written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” 

And this is the Hero of Heroes, triumphant at last, and triumphant 
forever. 

And they only that followed Him, whether on earth or in Heaven, are 
worthy of the name of heroes. 

There are many that bear the Christian name that can scarcely be 
reckoned Christian Knights. Thirty thousand names were on Gideon’s 
muster roll, but only three hundred of them made themselves immortal. 
One star differeth from another star in glory—so is it in the Church 
Militant, and so will it he in the Church Triumphant. 

What constellated glory shines in the eleventh of Hebrews! How 
Noah shines in the midst of Antedeluvian darkness! And how grandly 
heroic are the proportions of the patriarch of Uz, and of Moses, the Man 
of God, and Caleb and Joshua! Time would fail me to speak of the mag¬ 
nificent men that loom colossal amid the shadows of the Old Testament 
dispensation. But, perhaps, next to Jesus Christ the man who towers to 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


81 


the loftiest stature and kindles the intensest enthusiasm in every pious 
heart is the man who, as the great Apostle of the Gentiles, went forth 
the very embodiment of the Great Commission, a tireless herald of the 
truth and a fearless soldier of the Cross. 

Every known element found in him its noblest expression. If breadth 
of view be wanted his has never been surpassed. Three civilizations 
centered in him. He had the culture of the Greek, the imperial quality 
of the Roman, and the religious fervor of the Jew, when the Jew was 
brought to his best by the impartation of the grace of God by Jesus 
Christ. No pent up Utica contracted his powers. A Christian cosmo¬ 
politan he showed himself, if ever there was one. Other men have had 
particular nationalities laid especially upon their hearts, but Paul, like 
his Master, bore up the whole round world on his. 

And if motive ever glorified a hero then this great foreign missionary 
was entitled to the foremost plan. No salary lured him—with his own 
hands he ministered to his necessities. “I seek not yours but you” was 
the emphatic declaration of his lips and it was proved by the matchless 
demonstration of his life. Never was there deeper, tenderer love to 
man—never profounder, truer love to God. 

“Whether we be beside ourselves it is to God, whether we be sober it 
is for your cause”—such was the spirit that impelled and sustained him. 

And never did braver heart than his beat in human bosom. From the 
first he understood that it was no dress parade to which he was sum¬ 
moned. The Lord had showed him how great things he must suffer for 
his name’s sake. But he was not disobedient to the heavenly visibn, nor 
was he ever daunted by the perils that perpetually beset his path. Im¬ 
prisoned, whipt, stoned, left for dead, shipwrecked, baffled, deserted, 
misrepresented, hunted to the very gates of death by the hounds of 
hell—knowing that in every city “bonds and afflictions” awaited him— 
and yet in the midst of all he could calmly exclaim: “None of these 
things move me, neither count I my own life Tlear unto myself so that I 
might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have secured 
of the Lord Jesus.” 

No sadder spirit of splendid valor distinguished this heroic mission¬ 
ary leader, but patient persistence through all the long and weary years 
of that wonderful life of unselfish devotion to God and man, so that at 
the close of it he could sincerely say: “I have fought a good fight, I have 
finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up 
for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, 
shall give me in that day.” 

“Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our own sublime.” 

And no nobler inspiration can come to us from the contemplation of 
characters aglow with holy enthusiasm and devoted to the highest ser- 


82 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


vice that ever enlisted mortal man. There are such heroes even now, as 
there were in the olden time. Many a time we recognize them only 
when laid out for burial, and discover too late that we had been enter¬ 
taining angels unawares. Many of them will he uncovered when the 
secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, and we shall find that some, not 
much accounted of in their day and generation, were really making the 
bravest of fights, and displaying a splendid heroism which shall be glo¬ 
riously “rewarded in the resurrection of the just.” But after all one 
cannot fail to feel that the grandest of heroes and heroines are those who 
hearing the hour of the Great Commission, and hearing the wail of a 
perishing world, tear themselves loose from all the tender ties that bind 
them to their homes and friends, and animated by a quenchless love, and 
armed with an invincible purpose, say, “Lo, I come! I delight to do thy 
will, O God!” • 

Let me not be understood, as disparaging, for a moment, any other 
form of service. Any act of duty is a thing of beauty, but it is not all 
duty that rises to the height of the heroes. 

Such heroism is sometimes demanded in our daily duties here, for 
often the battle rolls to our gates, and rages in our streets, and we have 
urgent need to gird ourselves, and quit ourselves like men. But when 
one leaves every long loved scene of life, and plunges into deepest dark¬ 
ness, resolved to do, to dare, to die, if need be, that those who are per¬ 
ishing for lack of knowledge may hear the glorious gospel’s sound—this 
is something that quickens the heart throb in every generous bosom and 
wakens the applause of earth and heaven. 

And when, as in the expression of Carey and Marshman and Ward, 
and J'udson and multitudes more this self-sacrificing service is protracted 
for weary, toilsome years, and every word of truth and deed of love 
seems as water spilt upon the ground that cannot be gathered up again— 
when sickness wastes the frame, and trials oppress the heart—when the 
heathen mock and turn away, and friends lose heart and withdraw sup¬ 
port—when nothing seems to come of love’s labor but disappointment 
and disaster—to hold on in spite of all that, and feel at such a time, as 
Judson felt, at such a time, that “The prospect is as bright as the prom¬ 
ises of God”—this is heroism, the sublimest that mortal ever displayed 
in the sight of heaven. 

Oh, brethren, we have fallen upon easy going, pleasure loving times, 
even for the Church of Christ, when we seek to make religion winsome 
by eliminating from it all the severer elements that used to make it 
grandly heroic. 

Our favorite strain is the one which declares that religion never was 
designed to make our pleasures less, while we hear less than aforetimes 
of tears and blood. If the church has lost something of its fibre; if Chris¬ 
tianity has lost something of its attractiveness for manly souls the rea¬ 
son, possibly, is not far to seek. Let us have less of picnic presentation, 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


83 


and more of call to battle. Let us give all men to understand that the 
Church’s mission is nothing other than the conquest of the world, and 
that what it wants is not self-indulgent professors of religion, but mar¬ 
tial heroes, who in faith and love will catch up the standard of the cross 
and bear it in triumph to the ends of the earth. 


In the absence of Dr. Henson Tuesday night, whose speech 
was afterward furnished as above, Dr. Ellis spoke on “Giv¬ 
ing.” The only way to resist covetousness in the heart is by 
liberal giving. People should give till they love to give. 
Love does not stop to measure its giving. Witness the 
woman who gave the spikenard to Christ and the widow 
who gave her two mites, which constituted “all her living.” 
Love sacrifices itself in giving, and delights thus to sacri¬ 
fice itself. This great Centennial movement calls for the 
most devoted giving. The eyes of all the land are on Louis¬ 
ville Baptists, and much depends on what they do. He 
made a powerful appeal for men and women of wealth to 
give at least two per cent, of their property to this cause. 
He called on the young men and on those who were wage 
earners to consecrate a tenth of a year’s income to this Cen¬ 
tennial, and he urged young ladies and others living in com¬ 
fort, but without income of their own, to make sacrifices. 
“God loves the cheerful giver.” Let us all go on record this 
year as “God’s cheerful givers.” 

Dr. R. Ryland said, from the chair: “I will this year give 
five times my usual offering.” 

Several brief speeches followed. Dr. Weddell, of Chicago, 
urged that the luxury of giving begins when we give more 
than ten per cent, of our income. If we love God shall we 
not delight to give to what He loves? 

Dr. J. Wm. Jones said, this Centennial is no accident; it is 
the voice of God. 

Prof. O. T. Mason spoke of the cotton of the South as go¬ 
ing all over the world. If Southern Baptists would send 


84 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


Bible truth wherever their cotton goes, ere long the world 
would be evangelized. 

Dr. J. B. Hawthorne thought the work of raising this Cen¬ 
tennial fund was not a difficult one for Southern Baptists if 
only they could be made to feel their obligation and to ap¬ 
preciate their opportunity. 

Dr. F. H. Kerfoot wanted some plan set on foot to raise 
this fund. He thought it well to form bands who would give 
each 125.00, $50.00, $100.00, or more. He would be glad to 
belong to such bands and to induce others to join. 

The Rev. F. D. Hale, though all his salary had been alloted, 
would gladly give $100.00 to this Centennial fund. His 
church was seeking to get one cent a day for the year from 
each member. One little girl has already $22.00. 

The Chairman of the Committee (T. T. Eaton) then an¬ 
nounced that Dr. Powell’s services had been secured to take 
the field for the Centennial. While he would in every way 
practicable stimulate an enlargement of the regular work 
and the sending out of new missionaries, he would give his 
special attention to securing the fund of $250,000 for perma¬ 
nent work. This, being a special fund, must necessarily be 
raised by a special effort, but it is understood that what is 
given to this fund is to be in addition to what is contributed 
for the carrying on and for the enlargement of the regular 
work. 

Dr. R. Ryland spoke a few appropriate words in closing 
the meeting, and dismissed the assembly with a benediction. 


OF MODERN MISSIONS. 


85 


INTERESTING FIGURES 

PRESENTED BY PROF. O. T. MASON AT THE MIS¬ 
SIONARY CENTENNIAL MEETINGS. 


ITEMS OF THE WORLD'S 

COMMERCE. 

Year. 

Metric 

Unit. 

Amount. 

Population of the world. 

1882 


1,434,000,000 

Population of the United States. 

1890 


62,622,250 

English speaking people. 

1888 


111,000,000 

Emigrants from Europe since Waterloo. 



27,000,000 

Persons supported in commerce. 

1888 


350,128,000 

Persons engaged in commerce. 

1888 


141,790,000 

Exports and imports of the United States 

1891 


1,728,789,860 

Wealth of commercial nations.. 

1888 

$ 

294,686,000,000 

Wealth of United States. 

1888 

$ 

62,796,400,000 

Money, amount in the world. 

1890 

$ 

1,167,372,000,000 

Annual incomes of the world. 

1888 

$ 

4,356,018,000,000 

Revenues of the world. 

1889 

$ 

4,764,155,000,000 

World’s commerce. 

1889 

$ 

16,378,350,000,000 

Am’t stocks quoted in Londonunarkets. 

1889 

$ 

2,400,750,000,000 

Banking power of the world. 

1888 

$ 

1,550,545,000,000 

English budget estimates. 

1891 

$ 

425,000,000 

Capital and deposits in banks. 

1880 

$ 

12,515,000,000 

Gross receipts, U. S. Government. 

1891 

$ 

765,821,305 

Expenditures, U. S. Government. 

1891 

$ 

731,126,376 

Public debt United States. 

1891- 

$ 

610,529,120 

State, county, municipal school debt U.S. 

1891 

$ 

1,135,351,871 

Amount of coin and bullion, U. S. 

1891 

$ 

1,497,440,707 

Clearing house transactions, U. S. 

1891 

$ 

56,803,253,957 

Clearing house transactions, world. 

1888 

$ 

100,000,000,000 

Steam power in the world. 

1888 

horse 

50,150,000 

Food consumption. 

1888 

tons 

175,840,000,000 

World’s cotton. 

1888 

pounds 

4,783,000,000 

United States cotton. 

1888 

pounds 

3,420,000,000 

Coal consumed in the world. 

1889 

tons 

485,000,000 

Alcoholic drinks in the world. 

1888 

gals. 

5,733,000,000 

Containing alcohol. 


gals. 

605,000,000 

Liquor consumed in U. S. 

1891 

gals. 

117,767,101 

World’s mining. 

1880 

tons 

2,500,000,000 

Domestic animals (mammals). 

1888 


1,000,000,000 

Shipping of the world (steam). 

1888 

tons 

36,160,000 

Shipping of the world (sail). 

1888 

tons 

12,642,000 

Tonnage by shipping. 

1887 

tons 

139,000,000 

Light houses. 

1890 


6,208 











































86 


CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 


INTERESTING FIGURES.-Continued. 


ITEMS OF THE WORLD’S 

COMMERCE. 

Year. 

Metric 

Unit. 

V 

Amount. 

Cost of docks and harbors in use now... 

Mileage of canals and rivers. 

Mileage of railroads in the world. 

1891 


49,572,000,000 

196,366 

437.262 

Mileage of railroads in the world. 

1888 

miles 

354,310 

Passengers by rail. 

1888 


2,362,000,000 

Goods by rail. 

1888 

tons 

1,424,000,000 

Cost of the world’s railroads. 

Receipts of railroads, world.\. 

Letters sent through mails . 

1890 

$ 

27,619,600,000 

1,097,847,000 

1888 


8,569,000,000 

Papers sent through mails. 

1888 


8,759,000,000 

Postal revenues.... 

1888 

$ 

287,226,000 

Monthly issue of newspapers, etc. 

1890 


'’813,000,000 

Telegrams sent in the world. 

1890 


162,023,736 

Telegraphs of the world (lines). 

1890 

miles 

780,433 

Total capital in electricity, U. S. 

1890 

$ 

600,000,000 

Total capital in telegraphs, U. S. 

1890 

$ 

120,000,000 

Total capital in telephones, U. S. 

1890 

$ 

80,000,000 

Total capital in lighting, U. S. 

1890 

$ 

300,000,000 

Total capital in supplies, U. S. 

1890 

$ 

ioo,ooo;ooo 

Telegraph messages, U. S. 

1891 


59,143,343 

Telephone connections. 

1891 


450,000,000 

Spent by American tourists in Europe.. 

1889 

$ 

100,000,000 


































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